Never did man more unwillingly do anything than I did when, in obedience to my lovely tyrant’s commands, I dressed and walked out to find the house of the Brigade Major. I know men will not believe me, and none give me credit when I say, that I felt as if I had not one single lay since I left England. That my groin ached and I had all the sensations of a man who is soon about to have the joust he has most looked forward to, for which he has lived chastely and in reserve, in order to enjoy it more and for which he burns, I can only state the fact and let others believe or not as they like. Certain it is, that there are times when either from length of time, or the way in which a woman affects him, a man exhibits far greater power in the fields of Venus than at other times. Let me imitate Theophile Gautier, and request my readers, male and female, to remember that especial time, when the former had that splendid night, and the latter when she had the active, strong, big lover, the best of all she ever had, as far as love making goes.
In this state I walked over to the bungalow which was pointed out to me as that of the Brigade Major. I was so fortunate that I met him just as he was going out, with his smooth English terrier, for a walk before dinner.
“May I ask are you Major Searles, the Brigade Major, sir?”
“Yes, I am!”
“I should have come earlier to report my arrival, sir, but I have traveled so far in dak gharries that I have been lying down all day, and it was so very hot when I got up that I have deferred my coming to report myself until now.”
“And who may you be sir?”
“I am Capt. Charles Devereaux, of the First East Folk Regiment of Infantry, and I am on my way to Cherat to join my Battalion on promotion.”
“Oh! indeed! How do you do, Capt. Devereaux! I am sorry that I did not know you at first! Will you come in or are you inclined for a little stroll? Will you come over to Mess of the 130th and let me introduce you to the officers? I am afraid you won’t get to Cherat quite so soon as you may wish; every blessed machine with wheels has been ordered for a week to come, so that if I were offered lakhs of rupees I could not get you a conveyance here—besides which the road from Publi to Shakkote, at the foot of the hill is Kacha and bad for anything heavier than an ekkha and you would have to ride up the hill when you get there.”
The whole manner of the man was changed when he found I was an officer and what was more a captain, i.e., just one grade below himself in rank. Had I been a subaltern, he might have kept up a higher degree of hauteur.
At first I thought my new acquaintance rather an agreeable man. He spoke affably and pleasantly. Asked me about my voyage, my stay in Bombay, and journey up country. He spoke about the war which would practically come to an end when the Kandahar expedition had blown Ayoob Khan and the conquerors of the ill-fated Maiwand to the four winds of Heaven; then returned to the subject of Nowshera, the Dak Bungalow, its inmates, and turning to the subject of my well-known, as far as her most secret charms were concerned, but perfectly-unknown mistress, and soon he commenced a series of very subtle questions, which, from their very guardedness, showed me that there was one person, and one circumstance, which he was approaching, like a cunning cat stalking a sparrow, taking every cover as a guard as he crept up to it. I remembered the evident repugnance my new love had shown when speaking of Major Searles, and I fenced his questions, until he at last asked me openly:
“Have you seen a woman, a rather ladylike person, in the Bungalow?”
“I have seen one lady,” I replied, “but there may be more than that for all that I know, in the house, I have not been over it, so I cannot tell if the one I have seen is the person you refer to.”
“Well!” said he, “let me warn you that the woman I refer to is the wife of a non- commissioned officer—she is very pretty, and, I regret to say, about the most abandoned woman in India, if not in the whole world. She must be suffering from nymphomania, for she cannot see a man without she asks him to have her, and as she is really lovely to look at, it is quite in the cards that if she asks a young man, fresh out from England like you, he might accept the proposition, and think that he had fallen in with a very good thing indeed—but—pardon me—let me finish—the penalty for adultery with a European woman, in India, is two years imprisonment and a fine of two thousand rupees and expulsion from India of the woman herself. Already the woman I speak of has rendered herself liable to expulsion, hundreds of times, but no one has as yet informed against her, but her conduct at Peshawar has been so scandalous, and indecent, that proceedings will most likely be taken against her. A strict watch of which she is not aware is being kept on her, and some unfortunate fellow, say yourself, for you are young and no doubt do not dislike the ladies, ha! ha! ha! might find himself a victim of her lust, for lust it is and nothing else.”
“Well! Major Searles,” I replied, “I am a married man and so I hope less liable to temptation from the part 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 an Houri, and as lustful as the most able whore in Babylon.”
I had not lived so long a life of 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 Searles 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!”
The arrival at the Mess brought our 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, but who were 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 men, 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 been excused 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 Searles 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 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 Searles 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 Searles 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 had my charmer, indeed, I was certain he had, but I could not suffer him to do so whilst I was in Nowshera. I meant to keep her delicious sex 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, if he is at all a brute, would be able to very sadly interfere 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, an
d be as agreeable as possible. Our walk was a very simple and short one, for it was straight from the Mess to the Oak Bungalow, where Searles, 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 soon had it put in practice by the Khansamah, and that very night and every day following I had cool drinks.
We sat in 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 Searles went, only referring to his important conversation by 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 into the verandah and occupied the chair that Searles had sat in.
“What has that brute been telling you about me?” asked she, 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, of the way he had spoken of her, she strode 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 piece, and I would not take one, or a million, as payment! If I do play, I play for pleasure, and because I like my lover! But I hate a cad! and if ever there was a cad in this world it’s Major Searles,” and she spat on the ground in token of her detestation for him!
I used all my arts of gentle persuasion to try to calm her down, and at length succeeded. She told me that Searles had never had her with her permission. He had sent her message after message begging to be allowed to come and pay his “respects” but she had persistently refused all reply. I never got exactly the reason she abhorred him so much, but evidently there had been some circumstance which had raised a wall of hatred and aversion between them. She said that Searles was a man no woman could trust, and that supposing he could get the two thousand rupees for betraying her as a reward, and evade the punishment of the imprisonment, he was just the man who would get her to have him and then report the circumstance! It was evident that she hated him with more than ordinary hate, and I must confess I was glad to hear it, for I feared Searles had some right over her, and I, that I should have the mortification of knowing that he was reaping the indescribable bliss in her arms, whilst I was raging in silent torture in my room and I felt that such a thing would be perfectly unbearable.
Lizzie, for such at last I found was her name, dined with me that night and before we retired to bed she told me part of her history. 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 love, but before doing so I must explain how the abhorred attentions of Major Searles were put a complete end to, and Lizzie Wilson ridded herself of a man who had been her plague for some years.
The fatigue caused by several continuous day and night travels in a dak gharry, the excitement caused by the glorious and wholly unexpected bonne fortune which had thrown me a most willing though surprised victim, into Lizzie’s fair arms, and no doubt the excessive ardor with which I had fought the lovely foe, all combined to make me very tired, and after I had manfully resisted the heavy hand of sleep and had come out victorious with flying colors and standard still borne aloft, from two desperate encounters, I could no more, but sank by Lizzie’s side into the most complete, and indeed refreshing sleep, which I had since I left Bombay. My readers will not be surprised to hear that when I awoke the next day, I had become what Lizzie called a “common man,” that is the almost supernatural force which had sustained me the day before, had yielded up its extreme strength and like a second but far sweeter Delilah, she had shorn me of my source of strength, in so far that after the first morning sacrifice my proper weapon assumed the posture of repose and it required the titillations of Lizzie’s fair fingers, now toying with and caressing my eggs, now wandering along my groin now running the scale along my staff, and bringing that important charm into the rigid and erect state which enables it to perform its delicious duty. What a day that was! I think the alternate conditions of languor and fiery action were, on the whole, more delightful than the fierce and stormy tempest which had driven us so fiercely the day before. Lizzie too actually confessed that a second day like the first would have killed her. That her back was broken and that she felt she had indeed been grinding and been ground. So in spite of the cruel hot wind, and the savage bitings of the sand flies, terrible little pests so small that they can hardly be seen, and perfect torments to a tender skin, I passed a most delicious day. Lizzie was sand-fly proof, like some people get mosquito proof, but I, fresh from England, afforded those abominable pests the flies a feast, as rich in its way as the voluptuous bower between my Lizzie’s thighs had been for me! Every rose has its thorn, my sweet girl readers, and alas! most pleasures have their drawbacks. Happy are those who make the most of the rose and the least of the thorn.
I had hired a native servant as my factotum, when I stayed at 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 on others, though I had far finer game to follow than was afforded by Mrs. Soubratie’s brown skin and somewhat mellow charms, for though no more than twenty she had gone the way of almost all Indian women, and her bosom had begun to flow, and her bubbies otherwise fine and plump, hung in a despondent manner, defects however so common that they are little heeded by the British officers or soldiers, who whet their appetites on the fine, juicy slits, rather than on the personal graces of the dames who afforded them pleasure. Soubratie, hearing I was going to Mess, got out my nice, new, clean white mess clothes, and adorned himself also gorgeously, and armed with a lantern, saw me safely across the compound, ankle deep in the dust road, to the Mess of the regiment, where I was going to partake of the generous hospitality of the generous 130th. Is it any use to describe the anteroom, with its swinging punkahs, chairs, tables and pictures, carpets, books, newspapers: trophies of the chase, etc., etc. Shall I tell how the staff and important Adjutant welcomed me in a proper and decent style, the Colonel with an “inspection” looked at me; the other officers whom I had not yet met, with a polite and “glad to see you” from their lips and “I wonder what the devil kind of a fellow you are,” glance of 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 boredom there is a more good, naughty, wicked, devil-may-care current, which forms the pit 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 good deal more than I was likely to at the dinner table, where propriety and stiffness more or less ruled the roost, accordingly, as I was now. I heard the old stories of the war, tales of savagery, 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 greater res
ults would have occurred from the valor of the British troops. I knew how to discount all this; and listened with interest, more or less affected, to my new friends’ commiserations and views. But the “cloth off the table” brought a subject which is always congenial to the front. Woman, lovely woman, began to be discussed. My young acquaintance J. C.’s statement as to the complete absence of women from Tommy Atkins’ quarters in Afghanistan, and the consequent immense demand for love on his return to civilization and comfort was immediately confirmed. In those days, (it has been very recently altered) the regulations obliged a certain number of native girls to be especially engaged for the services of each regiment, and these ladies of the camp accompanied their regiment wherever they marched in India, just as much a part and parcel of them as the colonel, adjutant, quartermaster. But Tommy likes variety, as well as other people, and in every place where there is a “bazaar” or shops, there are establishments for ladies of pleasure, these latter earn a good many four anna bits which should by rights find their way into the pockets of the proper regimental whores. The recent influx of troops into Peshawar from Afghanistan had created an enormous demand for willing girls and Nowshera, Attock, even Rawal Pindi, Umballa and other places had been denuded of “Polls” who gathered like birds of carrion where the carcass lay. This was the great grievance for the officers of the gallant 130th, who were almost as badly off for women as they had been when they were at Jellabad, and at Lundi Kotal, at which latter place a Goorki soldier, who had got a bad clap from some native woman, was universally spoken of as the “Lucky Goorki!” Not because of the clap, bien entendu, but because, though he suffered afterwards, he had managed to secure for himself a pleasure so uncommon under the circumstances, that it seemed like water a thousand miles distant to a traveler lost in the great Sahara!
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