Read Venus in India for Free Online Page B

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