Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

Arthur Wesley need not have worried. During the course of that year Lord Mornington was to replace Sir John Shore as Governor General. By his desire, Arthur and the rest of the family were to change their name to the more aristocratic sounding form of Wellesley; and Arthur was to play a leading part in the final defeat of Tipoo Sahib. He was to leave India as Major-​General Sir Arthur, C.B. Ten years later, as Commander-​in-​Chief in Portugal, he was raised to the peerage and, although his Latin remained poor to the end of his life, he was in due course to surpass by far his clever elder brother; for he became His Grace the Duke of Wellington, Knight of the Garter, and Prime Minister of Great Britain.

During the next few weeks, Roger and Arthur Wesley saw a lot of one another and became firm friends. At Hickey's invitation, the Colonel took the chair at the St. Patrick's Day dinner, which proved a most hilarious occasion, and the party did not break up till past three in the morning.

In March, two distinguished Generals arrived from England; Sir Alured Clarke, who was to take over as Commander-​in-​Chief, and Major-​General John St. Ledger who, from having for a long period been a boon companion of the Prince of Wales, had so depleted his fortune that, like Colonel Wesley, he had come to India to escape the unwelcome attention of his creditors.

For these two gentlemen a whole succession of bachelor evenings were given by the leading residents of Calcutta and, in consequence, Roger found himself staggering to bed at dawn several times a week. In such a society there was nothing reprehensible about that, as it was common practice; but Clarissa now and then reproached him mildly and he did begin to feel somewhat guilty about his neglect of her.

After the arrival of Mr. Pitt's letter, they had talked of taking a passage home before the monsoon set in, and it was fully understood between them that as soon as they reached England they would give out that they had been married by a Christian missionary in Zanzibar, then have the actual ceremony performed in some quiet village where they were known to no one.

But Roger had taken no steps about securing a passage, because they were both to be called as witnesses when the case of Clarissa's marriage settlement came before the Court. After Lady Beaumont's Christmas Eve reception, young Winters had wisely refrained from making any slanderous statements regarding their relationship, but he had instructed his lawyers to contest the validity of the settlement. Hickey was confident that the Court would give a verdict in Clarissa's favour, but the law could not be hurried, and no definite date could yet be given on which the case would be heard.

Meanwhile, the morning hours now frequently found Roger in a heavy sleep, which deprived Clarissa of their ride together. Within the household Chudda Gya would, in accordance with Indian custom, allow her nothing whatever to do. She had only to express a wish for it to be carried out, but even her one attempt to feed the chickens was swiftly and reproachfully prevented. The bachelor parties Roger attended entailed her spending more and more evenings at home alone, and she found a pet monkey and a parrot she had acquired poor substitutes for his company.

They still made love with fervour and lavished endearments on one another, but she could not help showing some resentment that he so often now seemed to prefer his friends' society to hers; and, while this was far from being the fact, he found great difficulty in persuading her of it, because he had got himself caught up in a round of engagements which he could not break without giving offence.

This was the case with a bachelor week-​end that William Hickey had planned to have up at Chinsurah. He had General St. Ledger, Colonel Wesley, Sir Alexander Seton, Captain de Lancy and several others coming, had arranged some horse-​racing and secured a turtle with a special chef to cook it for the main course of their Saturday dinner, and he positively refused to let Roger back out.

It proved one of the best parties of its kind that Roger had ever attended. For three nights in succession they drank, laughed, sang and played the fool from dusk to dawn, pulling themselves round at about eleven each morning by the time-​honoured remedy of 'a hair of the dog that had bitten them'- sufficiently at least to engage in erratic games of snooker, 'career wildly about on their horses, and disport themselves on the river.

In the cool of Monday evening, decidedly part worn and very bleary eyed, Roger returned home. He was still so bemused by the enormous quantities of champagne, claret, hock and Madeira he had consumed that, on riding up the drive to his house, he failed to notice that on seeing him the usual cluster of squatting servants swiftly made themselves scarce. It was not until no one appeared to take his horse that he realised something must be wrong.

Stamping into the house, he shouted for Chudda Gya, for his jemadar, and finally for Clarissa. There was no reply. Alarmed now, he ran upstairs and into Clarissa's apartments. He was in time to see one of her native women run from the room out onto the covered balcony, scramble over its rail and shin down one of its supporting posts to the ground, but she ignored his calls to stop as she scurried head down to the servants' quarters. Taking the stairs three at a time, he plunged back down into the hail, seized a drum stick and beat upon the big gong until the house was quivering with the sound.

After a few minutes Oiudda Gya appeared from the back of the house. Putting the tips of his fingers to his forehead, he bent almost double in a deep salaam; then he went down on his knees with the resigned look of a man who expects to be beheaded.

"What is the meaning of this?' Roger roared. 'Where has everybody got to? What has happened? Where is the Mem-​sahib?'

Displaying the calm of an Oriental reared to accept the gifts the gods may send one day and death the next, without revealing his feelings, Chudda Gya replied:

'She has left you, Sahib. On Friday evening a Sahib came here. An hour later the Memsahib ordered her bags to be packed and at dusk she went away with him.'

Chapter 16

The Mysterious Elopement

For a moment Roger was too stunned to answer. It was true that during the past few weeks Clarissa had become distinctly petulant about his neglect of her, and the more or less drunken state in which he rolled home from bachelor parties. But for gentleman to return from such sprees far gone in liquor was the rule rather than the exception in London as well as in Calcutta. The Prince of Wales and his brothers were frequently carried drunk to bed, and in every city it was no uncommon sight at night to see a man lying dead drunk in a gutter. Women of all classes accepted such excesses as a normal feature of male conduct; so why Clarissa should resent it more than other ladies Roger could not think.

His neglect of her, too, had not been of an extent to justify serious complaint, as there were few husbands in Calcutta society who did not leave their wives one or two nights a week to go out to gamble, drink or be unfaithful and at least he had not been guilty of the last. Admittedly, since the arrival of Colonel Wesley and General St. Ledger, there had been a special spate of bachelor evenings, but never before had Roger left Clarissa for a whole week-​end, and before setting out for Chinsurah he had promised her he would accept no more such invitations.

Yet on the very evening of the day he had gone up river, she had eloped. That surely meant that she must for some time have been having a secret love-​affair with someone, and had already made her plans to desert him. He could not believe it; yet the fact stared him in the face. The thing that made it so inexplicable was that they had had no open quarrel. Far from it. Even her complaints had been made more as gentle reproaches than in anger. Between his nights out, the delight they derived from one another's companionship had not lessened. On the Thursday night they had made love with mutual zest, and on the Friday morning she had seen him off with a smiling injunction to give her love to dear Mr. Hickey and to enjoy himself.