'Such a devil of a girl! I'm nearly dead, by Jove; she eats and drinks like an ogress.'
I had the greatest difficulty in restraining my laughter. As for the ladies they regarded me with amazement.
Supper over, I rose up and whispered to F-, 'Take me into the ante-room, my garter has come down.'
F- offered his arm with a nervous air; arrived in the anteroom, I put my foot upon a chair, and pulling up my clothes about four inches above the knee, said, 'Well, put up my garter, you fool, can't you?'
F- plucked up his courage and performed the office required, but then took the liberty of slapping my thigh; I administered such a box on the ear as sent my gentleman flying to the other end of the room, where catching his spurs in the door mat, he fell to the ground. I walked off and seated myself beside Mrs B-, and told her the sequel.
'He'll find you out, my friend,' said she.
'Not a bit of it,' I said, laughing, 'if he talks of my dancing and eating, and the garter, you will say to everybody that he is a mean fellow, who took an unwarrantable liberty with the poor girl.'
'Very well, but now, my dear boy, you must go; remember you go straight into my dressing-room, strip as quick as possible, put all the things in the bottom drawer, then get out of the bathroom window and put on your own clothes, and get home as soon as you can. I'll detain Charlie here another half-hour, that will give you time; good-night.' I pressed her hand and left. I found my clothes under the window, and was soon fast asleep in my own bungalow.
It was eleven o'clock the next morning before I opened my eyes, I sprang off the cot, plunged my head in cold water, drank a cup of coffee, lit a cheroot, and seated myself in my easy chair on the verandah, as right as a trivet, but that was my 'age of iron'. In youth we can do such things, and all is couleur de rose, but grown old and grey, we succumb at last.
F- was furious. He saw that Mrs B- had played him a scurvy trick, but being a fool, he never fathomed it.
In relating this anecdote to my friends, I have been wont to embellish a little, and have told them that I declared myself to F-, and apprised him who Miss Jermyn was, such was not the case, it was never known to anyone but Mrs B- and myself; nor should I now tell the story, but, alas, dear Ellen, her husband and F- have been dead for years, and its narration can do them no harm, though many of my contemporaries yet living will recognise the initials, and remember the circumstances.
A few days afterwards the whole cantonment was scandalised by an affair that happened.
Mrs T- had supplied my place with young B- of the — th Dragoons and he used frequently to pass the night with her.
One night it happened that a servant, to whom she had spoken harshly, having previously had some suspicions of her fidelity to her lord, took it into his head to watch her through a hole he had made in her bedroom door. The patience of these natives is proverbial; he watched patiently till one in the morning, then he heard three raps at the jalousies of her bedroom (the window); she sprang out off the bed and opened them and young B- leapt in. They stripped themselves naked, she got on the top of him on the bed; the servant ran to his master's room and told him; the major, without making any noise, placed two men with loaded pistols under the window, with orders to shoot any person who came out, and then seizing a heavy horsewhip, went and burst open his wife's door; he surprised them in the act; he flogged his wife till the blood ran in streams; B- sprang out of the window, and was shot down by the watchers. The major, quite exhausted, went and locked himself in his room.
They flung B- into the lake, but he managed to get out, and crawled home with his right arm broken, and a ball in his groin.
The next day the major was found dead in his cot; the excitement had killed him, he had broken a blood vessel; he died without having time to alter his will, and Mrs T- retained all his property and her own; she removed B- to her house and nursed him in his illness; he sold out of the service, and they returned to England together, but whether he married her, or what became of them I could never learn. This affair made a great noise at the time, and seemed to render other persons who were carrying on intrigues very circumspect in their behaviour.
As for Mrs B- and myself, we arranged a plan by which it was next to impossible for a discovery of the amour to be made.
She used to visit me at night, enveloped from head to foot in a native veil, and often when my servants thought I was entertaining some Mohammedan girl, I was in fact enjoying the society of my pretty Ellen.
A year thus slipped pleasantly away; we had become very spooney on each other, and this dangerous sentimentality would certainly, in the end, have led us into a scrape. But fortune was propitious enough to order it otherwise. Captain B- received a staff appointment in a distant district, and we parted with eternal vows of constancy, fidelity and eternal love!
Some natural tears we shed,
But wiped them soon.
In fact, before she had been gone a week, I found consolation in the arms and charms of the enchanting Mrs H-. She was extremely beautiful, but had one defect — her teeth were bad, and when she opened her mouth she spoilt her face, yet I used to say of her that 'she was pretty in spite of her teeth'. And many others thought so too. Her husband was a 'prig', and an old woman to boot. He was a great poultry fancier, so while he disported himself with his cocks and hens, I made love to his wife.
She had a brilliant complexion — a lovely white and red — her hair was black, her eyes hazel; she was of a nature to feel passion, and of an age to declare it — in fine, she was piquant. But all her charms were lost on her sposo; he was a little plain mean-looking fellow, with a squeaky voice, and looked like a eunuch! Heaven only knows if he was one; to add to his defects, he was a 'Newlight', as the would-be saints of those days were called. I never knew a more contemptible creature; he stood in some awe of his handsome wife, who took care to have her own way.
As I did not admire bad teeth, I would only poke this woman in one way, and that was en levrette. She made great opposition at first, but soon got to like it, especially as I said to her, 'My love, in this attitude you gain an inch.' She had the most splendid back, and her hips and nether hemispheres were superb; her breasts, however, were not perfect, and not so firm as I could wish. At the end of three months we tired of each other and parted; I returned to the native girls, while she threw herself into the arms of Lieutenant W- of the — th N.I.
After I had been ten years in India, I took my furlough and returned to England. I had been very fortunate in the number of deaths that had occurred among the officers of my regiment, and found myself a captain at six-and-twenty, a rare thing in the company's service. I had quite resolved to lead a bachelor life. But my excellent mother, luck, Providence, or what you will — decreed otherwise.
My mother had been plotting and making up a match for me before my arrival. The lady was a reputed heiress with an estate of twenty-five thousand pounds; an only child, her parents declared that they could not let her go out to India — so my resignation of the service was made a sine qua non; how I could have been so besotted as to comply with this absurd condition, I know not; but so it was that having ascertained that the estate really existed, and finding the young lady had considerable personal attractions and seemed inclined to like me, I yielded in an unhappy hour to the solicitations of my mother. We were married.
After the ceremony we started in a carriage and four for Dover en route for Paris, and at that gay capital we passed the winter of 1844; we spent about fifteen hundred pounds in the five months we were there, the money being supplied by her mother from time to time. All this was very well, yet strange to say I grew very discontented; my wife was exceedingly jealous, so that whenever I even looked at a pretty face, I was treated with a pout, or a fit of the sulks, or with tears, which made her eyes red, and spoiled their expression. I began to long for the freedom I formerly enjoyed; and I found, too late, that fetters may be irksome, even if made of gold.