as I have remarked before, and the weakness of the flesh exceeds the strength of the spirit all too often.
But the conversation was bearing directly on a subject which was becoming interesting to me since I had seen Searle and heard Lizzie’s indignant remark that his wife was a regular whore, whose price for her charms was, however, uncommonly high. I did not mind what my fat major said about Searle’s designs on Lizzie that evening, because Lizzie would have to have been a most unaccountably stupid deceiver if she had merely expressed abhorrence of him to blind me! No, I felt certain the abhorrence was real and true, and I had no fear that I should find that she had afforded him a retreat, either hospitable or the reverse, in her sweet cunt when I got home to her again.
‘How do you mean “set up on her own account,” major?’ said I.
‘Oh! hum! well! look here, bend your head a little nearer to me! I don’t want to talk too loudly! Well! she is — that is, any fellow almost, who cares to give her a cool five hundred rupees, can have her.’
‘What!’ said I in well-affected incredulous tones, ‘you want to persuade me that an officer’s wife, a lady like Mrs Searle must be, has actually done such a monstrous, not to say such an idiotic thing, as not only to leave her husband, a thing I cannot understand, but to set up as a whore, and in such a place as Ramsket? Surely, major, you are mistaken! Remember! we are told to believe nothing we hear and only half of what we see!’
‘I know! I know!’ said he, still as calmly as if he were Moses laying down the law, ‘but look here, Devereaux, you won’t tell me I am a liar if I say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that my proof of what I say is that I, Jack Stone, have had Mrs Searle, and paid for my game! Yes, sir! Rupees five hundred did Jack Stone pay Mrs Searle for a night in Mrs Searle’s bed.’
‘Goodness, and you have actually –’
‘I have actually fucked her, sir! and fucked her well! and a damned fine poke she is too, I can tell you, and well worth the five hundred she asks for the fun. Such a damned fine poke is she that Jack Stone, who is not a rich man but must lay up for a rainy day, has put three times five hundred rupees away in the bank of Simla, and means to lodge them some day soon in the bank of Ramsket, of which the banker and sole proprietress is Mrs Searle, the bank itself being her goloptious cunt, between her goloptious thighs. Did you mark that, young man!’
‘And does Searle know this?’ I asked, still incredulous.
‘What? that I have had his wife?’
‘No, not that you in particular have had her, but that she is had by other men, and for money paid down on the nail.’
‘Know it! of course he does! It’s her way of paying him off for his brutal conduct to her, to drive him nuts by writing and telling him how nicely she is dragging his name through the mud.’
‘Then why does he not divorce her?’ I cried indignantly, for I felt that it was monstrous for a wife, no matter what her grievance might be, to behave in such an outrageous manner.
‘Ah! — but sink your voice a little lower, Devereaux, not that all this is not perfectly well known by our fellows, but about the divorce. Well, you see, if what I have heard is true, a divorce is the last thing Searle can get, or would care to ask for, no matter how much he might wish it could be managed.
‘Certain little things would come out at the trial, and he might find himself not only minus a wife whom he hates, but also minus his liberty and what remains of his honour, and I don’t think anyone would care to become a convict, even to rid himself of his wife!’
‘What little things?’ asked I, quite bitten with curiosity.
‘Oh! Searle was a long time in Persia before he married, and he got the Persian taste for boys! Sodomy, you know!’ And the modest major sank his voice to a whisper. ‘Sodomy! he tried to get Mrs Searle to acquire a taste for it herself, but she, like a proper woman, indignantly refused to comply. It might have stopped there, but one night Searle, full of zeal and brandy, actually ravished his poor wife’s — hem — hem — hem, well! — bum! and from that day she hated him — quite naturally, I think! Then, of course, she gave him the nag, nag, rough side of her tongue, until he nearly killed her, as I told you, in his passion. Then she went and set up at Ramsket.’
‘But,’ said I, horrified to hear such a disgusting story, so loathsome on either side, ‘how is it she can demand such enormous sums for what I expect equally good returns can be got almost anywhere in India!’
‘Oh! but you don’t know. First of all, Mrs Searle is in society — she is, I suppose, the most beautiful woman in India, if not in all Asia!’
‘In society!’
‘Yes! bless you! you don’t understand. Now come! You, who have seen the world at home! Have you not heard how Mrs So and So is suspected of poking, and yet you have met her every night at the best houses? Have you not seen common or fast women, who dare to do what your own wife or sister dare not, and nobody says more than that they are fast? Do you suppose you know what women actually do poke, and those who only get the credit for it? It is just the same with Mrs Searle. She lives in a pretty little bungalow, some three miles deep in the hills of Ramsket; she calls it Honeysuckle Lodge, but the funny fellows call it Cunnie Fuckle Lodge. Ha! ha! ha! and she has named the hill it is on Mount Venus; she stays there all the hot weather; in the cold weather she goes to Lucknow or Mteerut or Agra or Benares or wherever she likes. No fellow has her without an introduction. The Viceroy is damned spoony on her, and that is sufficient to keep the fashionable people quiet. People suspect, people know, but people pretend to think it impossible that the quiet lady, living in a little bungalow, away from all the world, minding her garden and her flowers, is anything but a poor, persecuted wife whose husband is a brute!’
‘Oh! that is it! So to have her you must get an introduction?’
‘Yes! Without that you might as well cry for the moon!’
‘And how is it to be managed?’ I asked out of simple curiosity, for I had no notion of having Mrs Searle, but I was interested in this curious story of which I did not know how much to believe or how much to discredit.
‘Ha! ha! ha! Devereaux! I fancy you are beginning to think whether you can find five hundred rupees for yourself, eh?’
‘Not a bit!’ said I indignantly, ‘I have no idea of such a thing, but simply asked out of curiosity!’
‘Well!’ said the pudgy little major, puffing his cheroot hard as it had nearly gone out, ‘no harm to tell you, anyhow! You can get an introduction from any man who has had her! I could give you one for instance. See! This is how I had her. I had heard of Mrs Searle and had, like everybody else, heard funny reports about her, which, like I see you do now, I only half believed. Well! I did not then know she lived at Ramsket, but chance made me pitch upon that place to spend three weeks’ leave in during the hot weather of ′75. The Viceroy and his staff were spending the time there also, and everybody was wondering why he chose Ramsket instead of Naini Tal. There is reason in everything and Mrs Searle was his reason, no doubt. However, without being too long winded, I met Lord Henry Broadford, the Assistant Military Secretary, you know. Broadford was at school with me, and is a damned good fellow. One day, soon after I went to Ramsket, I was standing talking to Broadford, when the finest, handsomest woman I had ever seen walked by, and Broadford took off his hat and smiled, and she bowed. She looked full at me as I took off my hat and, by George, sir! she made my heart thump in my bosom, she was so lovely. When she was out of earshot I said, “Harry, who is your friend? By God, she is a clinker and no mistake!”
‘ “Don’t you know,” says he, “why that is the famous Mrs Searle.”
‘ “Is it,” says I. Then I asked him if he knew whether it was true she poked, as people said.
‘Broadford looked at me and grinned and said: “Would you like to know for certain, Stone?”
‘And I said, “Yes.”
‘ “Well,” says he, “the most certain