She deluged her fair body with the eau-de-Cologne and then playfully threw a quantity over me. We soon finished the delicious cool wine, and so to bed again.
I begged her to kneel up that I might have a full view of her hinder beauties. She complied at once. Oh, what an enchanting prospect was before me. Imagine a skin white as alabaster, a slender waist, a Spanish back with a delicious fall in it, over which meandered her waving golden hair, imagine hips of enormous size terminating in a bottom the largest, the most dimpled and the whitest I had ever beheld, supported on thighs so rounded, so symmetrically proportioned, so altogether ravishingly exquisite that an angel of light could not have withstood such temptation. I stooped down and buried my face in those hills of snow, then rising up, I slipped with ease into her mossy grotto, and at it we went again. She jutted her bum out to meet my thrusts; she stretched straight out first one leg then the other; she passed her hand between her legs and felt my wand as it went in and out; she toyed with the balls of Cupid, and soon brought down another sweet shower.
'Oh, you're a man! a man!' she said, 'more charming by far than M-; he shall have me no more, sweet boy-faced fellow, I am thine for ever,' and she sank fainting on the bed.
When she had a little recovered, I asked, 'What have you done with little Jack?' (her son).
'Oh,' said she, 'Mrs B- so often asks me to let the little man pass the day with her children that I could not refuse, you know.'
'Ah I see; bright idea, wasn't it, today?'
'Very.'
'Hark! what's that,' and she sat wildly up in the bed.
'Somebody trying the door of the entrance-hall, and violently too,' said I, coolly.
'Up, quick, my love! do not wait to dress, gather up your clothes and get out of the window; run down to the border of the tank, hide yourself in the tope [grove], dress there and take the boat; flee! quick, begone.' I grasped my clothes; to unfasten the jalousie door, to spring out (fortunately we were in a one-storeyed house), to run like a madman across the lawn at the back of the house, to gain the tope, was the work of an instant, but even as I fled I heard a tremendous crash — the front doors had been burst open. But I knew her door was double-locked. I knew before the intruder could make that yield, she would have time to put the bed in order, to close the jalousies, to cast on her robe de chambre, to put out of sight the claret bottle and the glasses, and I was content. I dressed myself, and unmooring a little sailing skiff which the major kept for his diversion on the lake, I leapt in and, hoisting the sail, was soon a hundred yards from the shore. Then, indeed, I turned my head, and saw a man running at full speed down the jetty — by the time he reached it I had gained another fifty yards; he raised the gun which he carried to his shoulder and whiz, crack came a shot, slap through the sail and about a foot above my head. Well aimed, old fellow, said I jeeringly to myself, before you load again I shall be out of reach. But load again he did, and that rapidly; crack went another shot, but it only splashed harmlessly in the water, fifty paces astern of me. Well, to be sure, said I, you're a paladin, my fine fellow, whoever you are, but you're not the major, that's certain, he could never have run like that.
Concluding that my enemy would mount a horse, and gallop along the bank after me, I made for the shore at once and starting off through a belt of jungle, the track of which I knew quite well, from having often had a day's sport there, I reached my bungalow half dead with the heat, for it was barely three o'clock, the hottest part of the afternoon.
I drank some brandy and soda-water, and after I was cooled a little I took a tepid bath.
Nobody was at home but my choera, a pretty little boy about twelve years of age. This boy, Muniah his name, was very fond of me, and once when I was ill, nursed me with the greatest tenderness. 'Boy,'
I called; in the Madras Presidency all servants answer to the name of 'Boy', even if old grey-headed men. I addressed my haughty, high-caste dubash as 'boy' occasionally, just to keep him in his right place, though sometimes I called him by name, in compliment to his superior attainments and his caste. In Bengal, servants are called by, 'Qui hie?' (Who waits?)
'Boy,' said I. Muniah appeared.
'Muniah,' said I (a great compliment, he not being of high caste); he made me a low, a gratified salaam. 'Do you know where I went this morning?'
'Ho, sahib [yes sir], sahib ke jana Bhebee Sahib T- [my gentleman went to Mrs T-].'
'How do you know that?'
'I heard master tell the bearers to take palankeen there.'
'Bhote eucha [very good],' said I. 'Now mind, pay great attention to what I am going to say. If any sahib asks you where I went this morning, you must say that I have not been out, that I am not well, do you understand?' (All this in Hindustani.)
'Quite understand, sir.'
'That's all right, now brandy pawnee lao [bring some brandy and water], Argh lao [bring a light], and a cheroot.'
I lay down on my cot and smoked. Presently I heard the galloping of a horse at speed, the horse was snorting as if distressed, the rider pulled up with a jerk at the door.
'Sahib hie [is you master at home]?' roared the voice of Captain M-.
'Yes, sir.'
'When did he come in?'
'Master has not been out this morning,' said the boy, innocently.
'Not been out? You lie, you soure [pig].'
'No sir, I tell truth, sahib not well; sahib not been out at all since yesterday.'
'Very odd,' said M-, in English, 'can I see him?'
'Hullo! is that you M-?' said I, from within, 'come in, old fellow, glad to see you.'
He entered, he looked heated and troubled, and was covered with dust and his horse's foam.
He beheld me in an immaculate clean cambric shirt, and striped silk pajamahs, languidly lolling on my cot, smoking, my face pale and unheated. He was evidently staggered.
'And you really have not been out this morning, S-.'
'Out, by Jove! what should I go out for in this broiling sun, and I as seedy as be damned. Oh, those blasted fellows of the — th Dragoons, they sewed me up damnably with their bad wine. In "our service", you know, old fellow, we always give our guests good wine.' (The king's officers were always sneering at the company's, and used to say in "our service" we do so and so, but then we are royal regiments, who serve a crowned head, and not a lot of beastly merchants.) M- winced, and bit his lip. I surveyed him with the utmost nonchalance, from head to foot; he was a powerful man, and could have made mincemeat of me in a moment.
'But, my dear fellow,' said I, affecting a fashionable drawl, 'what the devil's the matter with you, you look so deucedly excited, is anything up?'
'Up! Yes, by God, something is up!' cried M-, dashing his fist down on the table, 'and curse me if I don't fathom it.'
'Ah, weally!' said I, with the most imperturbable coolness as I blew out a cloud of smoke, 'try a cheroot, old fellar!' and I handed him my case.
M- took the case and lit a cheroot; while pulling at it he suddenly raised his eyes; they met mine. What he read there I don't know, but he gazed at me long and fixedly, without saying a word.
'Now is the time of trial,' thought I, and I continued steadily to meet his threatening fierce eye, with an expression half curious, half languid, my brows slightly raised, and a cynic smile (I felt it must be cynic) on my lips, from which ever and anon issued volumes of smoke.
'Damn it,' cried M-, 'either you are really seedy, and have not been out of your bungalow, as you say, or you are the most perfect specimen of duplicity and coolness I ever met.'
'You flatter me,' said I, with a faint smile.
'Flatter you! by Jove! Look here, old fellar, if you have been out of the house, you have been to Mrs T-'s, and if I thought you had been there, I'd kill you,' he roared fiercely.