style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Not so fast, major, please! Appearances may be against me, but I think I can give a satisfactory explanation. The lady who lives in that room was most dreadfully ill last night and I, out of pure charity, have been nursing her!’
‘In your nightshirt and pyjamas, exactly! I expect she required a little cordial administered by an enema, only in front instead of behind, and required your services and elixir! Oh! Devereaux! it won’t do, my boy, but Jack Stone is not the man to preach; still he would like his friends to be frank with him, so, Devereaux, you may as well tell the truth and confess that, full of my description of Mrs Searle, and the splendid night I had between her plump white thighs, you came home and spent, I hope, as good a night with the fair lady in there! Confess now!’
‘Quite wrong, major, I can assure you! I plead guilty to having been much moved and stirred by your voluptuous narrative, and as human nature is frail, I dare say might have spent such a night as you believe, only that the lady was, as I said, fearfully ill, and all owing to that blackguardly brute Searle, too!’
‘Ah!’ said the major, ‘that is just what I have come to enquire about. Look here, Devereaux, there is a devil of a row on. Searle was brought home last night between seven and eight o’clock, whilst we were at mess, with five or six ribs broken, his right leg broken above the ankle, his nose smashed flat, his front teeth driven down his throat, and battered, cut and bruised all over. In fact, the doctor hardly expects him to pull through, he is so fearfully weak, and so completely smashed to bits. The corporal of the picket reports that hearing a disturbance going on in the dak bungalow, he doubled his men down and caught sight of two men of the 130th running away, and hearing loud voices in the bungalow compound, he found a crowd of natives and two civilians, Europeans, standing round the brigade major, who was lying on the ground, all doubled up, and from what he could gather there was a woman at the bottom of it, but he could give no clear account of what had happened, or how it had happened, or anything. Well, the colonel is, of course, much put about. We none of us love Searle, who is a sulky brute, if a good officer, but a brigade major can’t be half killed without a row being made about it, so he has sent me to try and find out all about it and as I guessed you would very likely have heard something, I came first to you.’
I then gave the gallant major a succinct account of the whole business, as told me by Lizzie. I had to undergo some unmerciful chaffing from Stone about her, and found it impossible to hide from him the truth about my relations with her. But he promised to be mum, and, as he said, there was no need for my name to be mentioned at all in the business, at all events at present, and perhaps not at all, as I was not at the bungalow when Searle was there but at the mess, luckily for me!
Armed with his news, and quite interested how it was that Lizzie should have had such violent ill usage, and should have passed through such a terrible scene, he returned to make his report to his colonel, and about four o’clock he sent me a note, or chit as it is called in India, to say that the colonel had agreed to hush the whole matter up, and simply report Major Searle on the sick list, and him — Jack Stone — acting station staff officer. He went on by saying that the sooner the parties were out of Nowshera the better, and he advised me to prepare Lizzie for a start; he would order a dak gharry for her as soon as one could be got, and a couple of ekkas for me, the ekka being the only wheeled vehicle which could run on such a road as there was from Publi to Shakkote.
Meanwhile, after Stone had gone, I returned to my post beside poor Lizzie. I watched her for a short time and presently she woke; seeing me still there, and neither shaven nor dressed, she rightly concluded that I had not been to bed all night.
‘Oh! Charlie! how kind! how good of you! How can I ever repay you!’
‘By getting well as quick as you can, my Lizzie. And then —’
‘Ah! Won’t I just! If I was kind before I will be doubly kind now! But I am all right! I had a bad go of fever last night, and my poor legs are stiff and sore, but I am well! If I only had some quinine, now would be the time to take it, just to keep off a second attack of fever.’
I had purchased a bottle of this invaluable powder at Bombay, and I ran and got it, and gave her the quantity she said would be right, in a glass of water.
‘There,’ she said, having made a wry face as the bitter dose ran down her throat, ‘now something to eat, for I feel faint for want of food and I am hungry. You see I was bad, my Charlie, but I think it was more fright than anything else.’
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