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Verrall could drop his offensive manner and talk amicably enough when he chose, and he did choose
with Elizabeth.
Ah, the joy of those rides together! The joy of being on horseback and in the world of horses–the
world of hunting and racing, polo and pigsticking! If Elizabeth had loved Verrall for nothing else, she
would have loved him for bringing horses into her life. She tormented him to talk about horses as
once she had tormented Flory to talk about shooting. Verrall was no talker, it was true. A few gruff,
jerky sentences about polo and pigsticking, and a catalogue of Indian stations and the names of
regiments, were the best he could do. And yet somehow the little he said could thrill Elizabeth as all
Flory’s talk had never done. The mere sight of him on horseback was more evocative than any words.
An aura of horsemanship and soldiering surrounded him. In his tanned face and his hard, straight body
Elizabeth saw all the romance, the splendid panache of a cavalryman’s life. She saw the North-West
Frontier and the Cavalry Club–she saw the polo grounds and the parched barrack yards, and the
brown squadrons of horsemen galloping with their long lances poised and the trains of their pagris
streaming; she heard the bugle-calls and the jingle of spurs, and the regimental bands playing outside
the messrooms while the officers sat at dinner in their stiff, gorgeous uniforms. How splendid it was,
that equestrian world, how splendid! And it was her world, she belonged to it, she had been born for
it. These days, she lived, thought, dreamed horses, almost like Verrall himself. The time came when
she not only told her taradiddle about having ‘hunted quite a lot’, she even came near believing it.
In every possible way they got on so well together. He never bored her and fretted her as Flory had
done. (As a matter of fact, she had almost forgotten Flory, these days; when she thought of him, it was
for some reason always his birthmark that she remembered.) It was a bond between them that Verrall
detested anything ‘highbrow’ even more than she did. He told her once that he had not read a book
since he was eighteen, and that indeed he ‘loathed’ books; ‘except, of course, Jorrocks and all that’.
On the evening of their third or fourth ride they were parting at the Lackersteens’ gate. Verrall had
successfully resisted all Mrs Lackersteen’s invitations to meals; he had not yet set foot inside the
Lackersteens’ house, and he did not intend to do so. As the syce was taking Elizabeth’s pony, Verrall
said:
‘I tell you what. Next time we come out you shall ride Belinda. I’ll ride the chestnut. I think you’ve
got on well enough not to go and cut Belinda’s mouth up.’
Belinda was the Arab mare. Verrall had owned her two years, and till this moment he had never
once allowed anyone else to mount her, not even the syce. It was the greatest favour that he could
imagine. And so perfectly did Elizabeth appreciate Verrall’s point of view that she understood the
greatness of the favour, and was thankful.
The next evening, as they rode home side by side, Verrall put his arm round Elizabem’s shoulder,
lifted her out of the saddle and pulled her against him. He was very strong. He dropped the bridle,
and, with his free hand, lifted her face up to meet his; their mouths met. For a moment he held her so,
men lowered her to the ground and slipped from his horse. They stood embraced, their thin, drenched
shirts pressed together, the two bridles held in the crook of his arm.
It was about the same time that Flory, twenty miles away, decided to come back to Kyauktada. He
was standing at the jungle’s edge by the bank of a dried-up stream, where he had walked to tire