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Policemen he looked on as no better than coolies. ‘Christ, what God-forsaken swine!’ he was often
heard to mutter as he moved down the ranks inspecting, with the old subahdar carrying his sword
behind him. Verrall had even been in trouble once for his outspoken opinions on native troops. It was
at a review, and Verrall was among the group of officers standing behind the general. An Indian
infantry regiment approached for the march-past.
‘The —— Rifles,’ somebody said.
‘And look at it,’ said Verrall in his surly boy’s voice.
The white-haired colonel of the —— Rifles was standing near. He flushed to the neck, and
reported Verrall to the general. Verrall was reprimanded, but the general, a British Army officer
himself, did not rub it in very hard. Somehow, nothing very serious ever did happen to Verrall,
however offensive he made himself. Up and down India, wherever he was stationed, he left behind
him a trail of insulted people, neglected duties and unpaid bills. Yet the disgraces that ought to have
fallen on him never did. He bore a charmed life, and it was not only the handle to his name that saved
him. There was something in his eye before which duns, burra memsahibs and even colonels quailed.
It was a disconcerting eye, pale blue and a little protuberant, but exceedingly dear. It looked you
over, weighed you in the balance and found you wanting, in a single cold scrutiny of perhaps five
seconds. If you were the right kind of man–that is, if you were a cavalry officer and a polo player–
Verrall took you for granted and even treated you with a surly respect; if you were any other type of
man whatever, he despised you so utterly that he could not have hidden it even if he would. It did not
even make any difference whether you were rich or poor, for in the social sense he was not more than
normally a snob. Of course, like all sons of rich families, he thought poverty disgusting and that poor
people are poor because they prefer disgusting habits. But he despised soft living. Spending, or rather
owing, fabulous sums on clothes, he yet lived almost as ascetically as a monk. He exercised himself
ceaselessly and brutally, rationed his drink and his cigarettes, slept on a camp bed (in silk pyjamas)
and bathed in cold water in the bitterest winter. Horsemanship and physical fitness were the only
gods he knew. The stamp of hooves on the maidan, the strong, poised feeling of his body, wedded
centaur-like to the saddle, the polo-stick springy in his hand–these were his religion, the breath of his
life. The Europeans in Burma–boozing, womanising, yellow-faced loafers–made him physically sick
when he thought of their habits. As for social duties of all descriptions, he called them poodle-faking
and ignored them. Women he abhorred. In his view they were a kind of siren whose one aim was to
lure men away from polo and enmesh them in tea-fights and tennis-parties. He was not, however,
quite proof against women. He was young, and women of nearly all kinds threw themselves at his
head; now and again he succumbed. But his lapses soon disgusted him, and he was too callous when
the pinch came to have any difficulty about escaping. He had had perhaps a dozen such escapes during
his two years in India.
A whole week went by. Elizabeth had not even succeeded in making Verrall’s acquaintance. It was
so tantalising! Every day, morning and evening, she and her aunt walked down to the Club and back
again, past the maidan; and there was Verrall, hitting the polo-balls the sepoys threw for him,
ignoring the two women utterly. So near and yet so far! What made it even worse was that neither
woman would have considered it decent to speak of the matter directly. One evening the polo-ball,