The Rape of Venice (34 page)

In March, two distinguished Generals arrived from England: Sir Alured Clarke, who was to take over as Commander-in-Chief, and Major-General John St. Ledger who, from having for a long period been a boon companion of the Prince of Wales, had so depleted his fortune that, like Colonel Wesley, he had come to India to escape the unwelcome attention of his creditors.

For these two gentlemen a whole succession of bachelor evenings were given by the leading residents of Calcutta and, in consequence, Roger found himself staggering to bed at dawn several times a week. In such a society there was nothing reprehensible about that, as it was common practice; but Clarissa now and then reproached him mildly and he did begin to feel somewhat guilty about his neglect of her.

After the arrival of Mr. Pitt's letter, they had talked of taking a passage home before the monsoon set in, and it was fully understood between them that as soon as they reached England they would give out that they had been married by a Christian missionary in Zanzibar, then have the actual ceremony performed in some quiet village where they were known to no one.

But Roger had taken no steps about securing a passage, because they were both to be called as witnesses when the case of Clarissa's marriage settlement came before the Court. After Lady Beaumont's Christmas Eve reception, young Winters had wisely refrained from making any slanderous statements regarding their relationship, but he had instructed his lawyers to contest the validity of the settlement. Hickey was confident that the Court would give a verdict in Clarissa's favour, but the law could not be hurried, and no definite date could yet be given on which the case would be heard.

Meanwhile, the morning hours now frequently found Roger in a heavy sleep, which deprived Clarissa of their ride together. Within the household Chudda Gya would, in accordance with Indian custom, allow her nothing whatever to do. She had only
to express a wish for it to be carried out, but even her one attempt to feed the chickens was swiftly and reproachfully prevented. The bachelor parties Roger attended entailed her spending more and more evenings at home alone, and she found a pet monkey and a parrot she had acquired poor substitutes for his company.

They still made love with fervour and lavished endearments on one another, but she could not help showing some resentment that he so often now seemed to prefer his friends' society to hers; and, while this was far from being the fact, he found great difficulty in persuading her of it, because he had got himself caught up in a round of engagements which he could not break without giving offence.

This was the case with a bachelor week-end that William Hickey had planned to have up at Chinsurah. He had General St. Ledger, Colonel Wesley, Sir Alexander Seton, Captain de Lancy and several others coming, had arranged some horse-racing and secured a turtle with a special chef to cook it for the main course of their Saturday dinner, and he positively refused to let Roger back out.

It proved one of the best parties of its kind that Roger had ever attended. For three nights in succession they drank, laughed, sang and played the fool from dusk to dawn, pulling themselves round at about eleven each morning by the time-honoured remedy of ‘a hair of the dog that had bitten them'—sufficiently at least to engage in erratic games of snooker, career wildly about on their horses, and disport themselves on the river.

In the cool of Monday evening, decidedly part-worn and very bleary-eyed, Roger returned home. He was still so bemused by the enormous quantities of champagne, claret, hock and Madeira he had consumed that, on riding up the drive to his house, he failed to notice that on seeing him the usual cluster of squatting servants swiftly made themselves scarce. It was not until no one appeared to take his horse that he realised something must be wrong.

Stamping into the house, he shouted for Chudda Gya, for his jemadar, and finally for Clarissa. There was no reply. Alarmed now, he ran upstairs and into Clarissa's apartments. He was in time to see one of her native women run from the room out onto the covered balcony, scramble over its rail and shin down one of its supporting posts to the ground, but she ignored his calls to stop as she scurried head down to the
servants' quarters. Taking the stairs three at a time, he plunged back down into the hall, seized a drum stick and beat upon the big gong until the house was quivering with the sound.

After a few minutes Chudda Gya appeared from the back of the house. Putting the tips of his fingers to his forehead, he bent almost double in a deep salaam; then he went down on his knees with the resigned look of a man who expects to be beheaded.

‘What is the meaning of this?' Roger roared. ‘Where has everybody got to? What has happened? Where is the Memsahib?'

Displaying the calm of an Oriental reared to accept the gifts the gods may send one day and death the next, without revealing his feelings, Chudda Gya replied:

‘She has left you, Sahib. On Friday evening a Sahib came here. An hour later the Memsahib ordered her bags to be packed and at dusk she went away with him.'

For a moment Roger was too stunned to answer. It was true that during the past few weeks Clarissa had become distinctly petulant about his neglect of her, and the more or less drunken state in which he rolled home from bachelor parties. But for gentleman to return from such sprees far gone in liquor was the rule rather than the exception in London as well as in Calcutta. The Prince of Wales and his brothers were frequently carried drunk to bed, and in every city it was no uncommon sight at night to see a man lying dead drunk in a gutter. Women of all classes accepted such excesses as a normal feature of male conduct; so why Clarissa should resent it more than other ladies Roger could not think.

His neglect of her, too, had not been of an extent to justify serious complaint, as there were few husbands in Calcutta society who did not leave their wives one or two nights a week to go out to gamble, drink or be unfaithful—and at least he had not been guilty of the last. Admittedly, since the arrival of Colonel Wesley and General St. Ledger, there had been a special spate of bachelor evenings, but never before had Roger left Clarissa for a whole week-end, and before setting out for Chinsurah he had promised her he would accept no more such invitations.

Yet on the very evening of the day he had gone up-river, she had eloped. That surely meant that she must for some time have been having a secret love-affair with someone, and had already made her plans to desert him. He could not believe it; yet the fact stared him in the face. The thing that made it so inexplicable was that they had had no open quarrel. Far from it. Even her complaints had been made more as gentle
reproaches than in anger. Between his nights out, the delight they derived from one another's companionship had not lessened. On the Thursday night they had made love with mutual zest, and on the Friday morning she had seen him off with a smiling injunction to give her love to dear Mr. Hickey and to enjoy himself.

Roger's wide experience of women had made him cynical about them. He knew that even the most stupid were capable of laying plans to ensnare a man better than most generals could plan a battle, and that their natural ability for acting was a thing to marvel at. Memories flashed into his mind of lovely, seemingly innocent faces listening, apparently with eager interest, to a husband's wearisome discourse, while their owners were, in fact, counting the minutes until they could give themselves to a lover—and most people present, except the husbands, had known it. There were times when, being the lover, he had watched such little comedies with special amusement. Now, it seemed for some weeks past, he must have been the victim of just such a pretty deception, and the odds were that Calcutta society had been laughing at him behind his back.

The shock had cleared the last fumes of wine from his brain. Just as when surprised by some sudden danger, it had become cold, swift, calculating. He wasted no time in mawkish selfpity, or senselessly berating Chudda Gya; instead he questioned the still-kneeling servant quickly and to the point. But Chudda Gya's replies threw little fresh light on the situation.

He did not know the Sahib with whom the Memsahib had gone away; had never seen him before. The stranger sahib had arrived in a handsome palanquin; he was richly dressed but not young, of medium height, with broad shoulders and a commanding manner. He had given no name but said only that he was a friend of the Memsahib's and she would be pleased to see him. That was soon after the siesta hour. He had been asked to wait, and the Memsahib had come downstairs to him. She had taken him through to the veranda-lounge and sent for drinks. About an hour later she had gone upstairs and ordered her woman to pack for her. Meanwhile, her visitor had sent one of his people down the road out of sight, but the man had not gone far as he shortly returned with others leading pack horses. Onto these, the Memsahib's baggage had been loaded. Then, without a word to Chudda Gya or any of the other servants, who had watched these proceedings with considerable
surprise, she had allowed herself to be helped into the palanquin and carried away.

Roger had Chudda Gya bring all the other servants and questioned them in turn, but got little further. It emerged that the visitor spoke Urdu fluently, had been wearing a number of valuable jewels, and that his servants had given the impression that they went in fear of him. Clarissa had appeared calm and collected. She had not been seen or heard to laugh with her visitor; but, on the other hand, she had not cried, or shown the least sign of distress when leaving. Strangest of all, as it seemed to Roger, she had left no farewell note for him or even a message with one of her women.

It occurred to him that they might have been bribed to give him the minimum of information and so make it more difficult for him to get on her track. Promptly, he offered any or all of them a year's wages if they would help him to solve the mystery of her disappearance; but they only shook their heads and protested that they knew nothing more. Chudda Gya even assured him that, as he had proved a kind master and the Memsahib a kind mistress, they would have risked their lives in her defence, had it appeared to them that she was being taken away against her will; but her departure had been as unforced and deliberate as if she had been setting out with him, her lord, to spend a week-end with friends in the country.

Clearly, no more could be learnt from them, so Roger strode out of the house, remounted his horse and set off at a canter for the city. With Hickey and the others he had come down river that afternoon by barge as far as Barangar on the outskirts of Calcutta, only then collected the mount that he had left stabled there over the week-end. So the horse was fairly fresh, and carried him to Hickey's town residence within a quarter of an hour. The lawyer was engaged with his chief clerk, running through the major cases being handled by the firm during the current week, but at Roger's urgent request he postponed further business and had him shown in.

As soon as they were alone, Roger asked, ‘Will, am I right in counting you a friend who would not lie to me?'

‘Why yes, my dear Roger,' replied the astonished lawyer. ‘But, Heavens alive, man, what's come over you? You're as white as if you'd seen a ghost.'

‘Maybe! No matter! You know more of what goes on in Calcutta than any man. No beating about the bush now! I
want the name of the man who has been pursuing Clarissa these past three weeks or more.'

Hickey would have smiled, had not Roger's face been so black and threatening. As it was, he shrugged and replied quietly. ‘My dear fellow, would you have me name half the bucks of the town. Mrs. Brook is the loveliest woman in it, and ‘twould be against nature did not every gallant who sets eyes on her try his luck to intrigue her while you are engaged with others in more serious conversation.'

‘To the devil with that!' exclaimed Roger. ‘I mean some man of parts and wealth who has been making the running with her in such a way that could not have escaped your notice.'

‘No, no.' Hickey shook his head. ‘Many have tried and their endeavours have been evident enough; but all have been shortly chilled into desisting. Your sweet Clarissa does not seek to disguise the fact that your smile has the power to make her warmly human; but for all other men she is an icicle.'

‘You're wrong in that!' Roger burst out. ‘Utterly wrong! On my return home I found her gone. And gone bag and baggage with some other man who came to fetch her on Friday evening.'

Hickey came to his feet, staring at Roger in astonishment. ‘You say she's left you? Damne I'd never have believed it!'

‘It's true enough. She eloped with some wealthy nabob within a few hours of my setting out for Chinsurah; and she'd never have done that unless they had had some previous understanding. Surely you must at least have heard by rumour the name of some man with whom she has been carrying on an intrigue?'

‘I have not. That I swear to you. But why should she do this? Had you quarrelled?'

‘No; at least, no more than that she had complained somewhat of late that I've spent so many evenings away from home. Maybe I am to blame for that; though not overmuch, unless you grant a woman the right to become plaguey dictatorial.'

‘Did she not leave a letter giving her reasons for leaving you?'

‘Nay, not a thing.'

'Then all is not lost. It may be that she is only giving you a fright to punish you for your neglect of her. When you get home again you may find her there, and learn that she spent the week-end quite innocently with friends.'

‘I would I could think it; but I can't. In such a case she
would never have removed all her belongings from the house—even to her pets. No, no; some soft-tongued schemer has taken advantage of her temporary disgruntlement and persuaded her to leave me for him. And once her mind's made up about a thing, nothing will turn her from it. But I'll be even with him. By the time I've done with him his body will be as full of holes as a garden sieve.'