Читать книгу The Magnificent Montez: From Courtesan to Convert - Horace Wyndham - Страница 17

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Except when on active service, officers of the Company's Army were not overworked. Everything was left to the sergeants and corporals; and, while Thomas Atkins and Jack Sepoy trudged in the dust and sweated and drilled in their absurd stocks and tight tunics, the commissioned ranks, lolling in barracks, killed the long hours as they pleased.

Following form, Captain James (the Afghan business had brought him a step in rank) did a certain amount of tiger-shooting and pig-sticking, and a good deal of brandy-swilling, combined with card-playing and gambling. As a husband, he was not a conspicuous success. "He slept," complained Lola, feeling herself neglected, "like a boa-constrictor," and, during the intervals of wakefulness, "drank too much porter." The result was, there were quarrels, instead of love-making, for they both had tempers.

"Runaway matches, like runaway horses," Lola had once written, "are almost sure to end in a smash-up." In this case there was a "smash-up," for Tom James was not always sleeping and drinking. He had other activities. If fond of a glass, he was also fond of a lass. The one among them for whom he evinced a special fondness was a Mrs. Lomer, the wife of a brother officer, the adjutant of his regiment. His partiality was reciprocated.

One morning when, without any suspicion of what was in store for them, Mrs. James and Adjutant Lomer sat down to their chota-hazree, two members of the accustomed breakfast party were missing. Enquiries having been set on foot, the fact was elicited that Captain James and Mrs. Lomer had gone out for an early ride. It must have been a long one, thought the camp, as they did not appear at dinner that evening. Messengers sent to look for them came back with a disturbing report. This was to the effect that the couple had slipped off to the Nilgiri Hills and had decided to stop there.

The next morning a panting native brought a letter from the errant lady addressed to her furious spouse. This missive is (without explaining how he got it) reproduced by an American journalist, T. Everett Harré, in a series of articles, The Heavenly Sinner: "I suggest," runs an extract, "you come to your senses and give me my freedom … I am going with a man of parts who knows how to give a woman the attentions she craves, and is himself glad to shake off a young chit of a wife who is too brainless to appreciate him."

A first-class sensation. The entire cantonment throbbed and buzzed with excitement. The colonel fumed; the adjutant cursed; and there was talk of bringing the Don Juan Captain James to a court-martial for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." But Lola, as was her custom, took it philosophically, doubtless reflecting that she was well rid of a spouse for whom she no longer cared, and went back to her mother in Calcutta.

Mrs. Craigie's maternal heart-strings should have been wrung by the unhappy position of her daughter. They were not wrung. The clandestine marriage, with the upsetting of her own plans, still rankled and remained unforgiven and unforgotten. As a result, when she asked for shelter and sympathy, Lola received a very frigid welcome. Her step-father, however, took her part, and declared that his bungalow was open to her until other arrangements could be made for her future. Not being possessed of much imagination, his idea was that she should leave India temporarily and stop for a few months in Scotland with his brother, Mr. David Craigie, a man of substance and Provost of Perth. After an interval for reflection there, he felt that the differences of opinion that had arisen between her husband and herself would become adjusted, and the young couple resume marital relations. Accordingly, he wrote to his brother, asking him to meet her when she arrived in London and escort her to Perth.

Lola, however, while professing complete agreement, had other views as to her future. She wanted neither a reconciliation with her husband nor a second experience of life with the Craigie family in Scotland. One such had been more than sufficient, but she was careful not to breathe a word on the subject. She kept her own counsel, and matured her own plans.