“Yes, to be sure I am,” she replied briskly.
“Well then, if I may, I will call in on Thursday and take my chance. We might have a gallop round Moul Ali racecourse.”
On Thursday, which was the garrison holiday, a large riding party assembled outside our quarters. Colonel and Mrs. Soames, Major and Mrs. Mills, Ronnie and his greatest friend in the regiment, Mr. Arkwright, Captain Gloag, the adjutant, Captain Falkland, Colonel Grey (a colonel of the artillery in Trimulgherry—not very far from our lines), his two daughters and myself.
The Misses Grey, Emily and Mabel, were not remarkably pretty, but were very popular in the station. Their mother being dead, their father enacted the part of an effective chaperon. He was a wonderfully dapper, active little widower, and looked young to be the father of these well-grown young women, was a capital tennis player and an indefatigable dancer. It was certainly rather hard upon the girls that he laid such heavy toll upon them for partnership on tennis court or in ballroom. At every dance it was an unwritten law that each had to reserve three dances for her parent. As they danced beautifully their young men friends considered this claim an outrageous exercise of parental authority. Certainly the little colonel danced amazingly well. If by any chance one of the girls “cut” her father’s waltz, domestic matters would be more or less disagreeable for some time. In all other respects he was a pattern to chaperons.
Moul Ali, an otherwise forsaken racecourse, was often the scene of morning and evening gallops, and the forlorn, dilapidated stand made a suitable resort for chotah hazri, afternoon teas, or even moonlight suppers. The course and stand were the sole attraction to people from the cantonments, as this portion of the Deccan is surprisingly ugly, and has to depend for its beauty on sunset and moonlight effects. The land is barren, covered with low-growing shrub and enormous red sandstone boulders of every size and shape. So numerous are these that there is a native legend to the effect that when the Creator had completed His work, He discharged all the rubbish in this part of the world. For miles and miles it is a sea of stones, with not even a palm or a mango tope to break the monotony.
On this particular Thursday morning the sun was scarcely over the horizon when we moved off en masse. I rode with Colonel Soames. Our way lay along a rough cart track, full of ruts and rocks, bordered with bleached jungle grass and thorny, leafless bushes. At last we arrived at our destination and there let ourselves and our horses “out.” How I enjoyed that delightful gallop with the fresh morning air beating in my face! Captain Falkland’s great waler and my stud-bred raced along together side by side, and we were soon far ahead of the rest of the party.
“Your animal has a turn of speed; that was a good stretcher,” he remarked, as we subsided to a walk. “You love riding, I can see.”
“Yes,” I replied; “and here it is all so nice and free. One is, as it were, off the road,” and I waved my hand at the enormous stretch of open country.
“That’s so,”he assented. “There are no farmers to head you off new wheat, but it’s pretty bad going. You have not yet come across any of our big nullahs.” Then turning round, so as almost to look me straight in the face, “I say, do tell me, now we are by ourselves, how you happened to come out to India.”
“I wanted to come,” I replied. “I have always longed to see the East.”