‘I don’t see how he can. He’s been nearly a month in headquarters now. The firm would be furious if they heard of it. And of course both of us will have to go with him. Such a bore! The mosquitoes—simply terrible!’
Terrible indeed! To have to go away before Elizabeth had so much as said how-do-you-do to Verrall! But they would certainly have to go if Mr Lackersteen went. It would never do to leave him to himself. Satan finds some mischief still, even in the jungle. A ripple like fire ran down the line of sepoys; they were unfixing bayonets before marching away. The dusty rank turned left, saluted, and marched off in column of fours. The orderlies were coming from the police lines with the ponies and polo-sticks. Mrs Lackersteen took a heroic decision.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘we’ll take a short-cut across the maidan. It’s so much quicker than going right round by the road.’
It was quicker by about fifty yards, but no one ever went that way on foot, because of the grass-seeds that got into one’s stockings. Mrs Lackersteen plunged boldly into the grass, and then, dropping even the pretence of making for the Club, took a bee-line for Verrall, Elizabeth following. Either woman would have died on the rack rather than admit that she was doing anything but take a short-cut. Verrall saw them coming, swore, and reined in his pony. He could not very well cut them dead now that they were coming openly to accost him. The damned cheek of these women! He rode slowly towards them with a sulky expression on his face, chivvying the polo-ball with small strokes.
‘Good morning, Mr Verrall!’ Mrs Lackersteen called out in a voice of saccharine, twenty yards away.
‘Morning!’ he returned surlily, having seen her face and set her down as one of the usual scraggy old boiling-fowls of an Indian station.
The next moment Elizabeth came level with her aunt. She had taken off her spectacles and was swinging her Terai hat in her hand. What did she care for sunstroke? She was perfectly aware of the prettiness of her cropped hair. A puff of wind—oh, those blessed breaths of wind, coming from nowhere in the stifling hot-weather days!—had caught her cotton frock and blown it against her, showing the outline of her body, slender and strong like a tree. Her sudden appearance beside the older, sun-scorched woman was a revelation to Verrall. He started so that the Arab mare felt it and would have reared on her hind legs, and he had to tighten the rein. He had not known until this moment, not having bothered to inquire, that there were any young women in Kyauktada.
‘My niece,’ Mrs Lackersteen said.
He did not answer, but he had thrown away the polo-stick, and he took off his topi. For a moment he and Elizabeth remained gazing at one another. Their fresh faces were unmarred in the pitiless light. The grass-seeds were tickling Elizabeth’s shins so that it was agony, and without her spectacles she could only see Verrall and his horse as a whitish blur. But she was happy, happy! Her heart bounded and the blood flowed into her face, dyeing it like a thin wash of aquarelle. The thought, ‘A peach, by Christ!’ moved almost fiercely through Verrall’s mind. The sullen Indians, holding the ponies’ heads, gazed curiously at the scene, as though the beauty of the two young people had made its impression even on them.
Mrs Lackersteen broke the silence, which had lasted half a minute.
‘You know, Mr Verrall,’ she said somewhat archly, ‘we think it rather unkind of you to have neglected us poor people all this time. When we’re so pining for a new face at the Club.’
He was still looking at Elizabeth when he answered, but the change in his voice was remarkable.
‘I’ve been meaning to come for some days. Been so fearfully busy—getting my men into their quarters and all that. I’m sorry,’ he added—he was not in the habit of apologising, but really, he had decided, this girl was rather an exceptional bit of stuff—‘I’m sorry about not answering your note.’
‘Oh, not at all! We quite understood. But we do hope we shall see you at the Club this evening? Because you know,’ she concluded even more archly, ‘if you disappoint us any longer, we shall begin to think you rather a naughty young man!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be there this evening.’
There was not much more to be said, and the two women walked on to the Club. But they stayed barely five minutes. The grass-seeds were causing their shins such torment that they were obliged to hurry home and change their stockings at once.
Verrall kept his promise and was at the Club that evening. He arrived a little earlier than the others, and he had made his presence thoroughly felt before being in the place five minutes. As Ellis entered the Club the old butler darted out of the card-room and waylaid him. He was in great distress, the tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘Sir! Sir!’
‘What the devil’s the matter now?’ said Ellis.
‘Sir! Sir! New master been beating me, sir!’
‘What?’
‘Beating me, sir!’ His voice rose on the ‘beating’ with a long tearful wail—‘be-e-e-eating!’
‘Beating you? Do you good. Who’s been beating you?’
‘New master, sir. Military Police sahib. Beating me with his foot, sir—here!’ He rubbed himself behind.
‘Hell!’ said Ellis.
He went into the lounge. Verrall was reading the Field, and invisible except for Palm Beach trouser-ends and two lustrous sooty-brown shoes. He did not trouble to stir at hearing someone else come into the room. Ellis halted.
‘Here, you—what’s your name—Verrall!’
‘What?’
‘Have you been kicking our butler?’
Verrall’s sulky blue eye appeared round the corner of the Field, like the eye of a crustacean peering round a rock.
‘What?’ he repeated shortly.
‘I said, have you been kicking our bloody butler?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what the hell do you mean by it?’
‘Beggar gave me his lip. I sent him for a whisky and soda, and he brought it warm. I told him to put ice in it, and he wouldn’t—talked some bloody rot about saving the last piece of ice. So I kicked his bottom. Serve him right.’
Ellis turned quite grey. He was furious. The butler was a piece of Club property and not to be kicked by strangers. But what most angered Ellis was the thought that Verrall quite possibly suspected him of being sorry for the butler—in fact, of disapproving of kicking as such.
‘Serve him right? I dare say it bloody well did serve him right. But what in hell’s that got to do with it? Who are you to come kicking our servants?’
‘Bosh, my good chap. Needed kicking. You’ve let your servants get out of hand here.’
‘You damned, insolent young tick, what’s it got to do with you if he needed kicking? You’re not even a member of this Club. It’s our job to kick the servants not yours.’
Verrall lowered the Field and brought his other eye into play. His surly voice did not change its tone. He never lost his temper with a European; it was never necessary.
‘My good chap, if anyone gives me lip I kick his bottom. Do you want me to kick yours?’
All the fire went out of Ellis suddenly. He was not afraid, he had never been afraid in his life; only, Verrall’s eye was too much for him. That eye could make you feel as though you were under Niagara! The oaths wilted on Ellis’s lips; his voice almost deserted him. He said querulously and even plaintively:
‘But damn it, he was quite right not to give you the last bit of ice. Do you think we only buy ice for you? We can only get the stuff twice a week in this place.’
‘Rotten