The Dark Horse by Rumer Godden Read Free Book Online Page B

unlike other Calcutta women, absolutely without guile. ‘How many people are that?’ John asked Mother Morag and, ‘She wanted me so badly,’ but he could not say that to a nun.
    He had been warned by the young but more experienced Robert, ‘Don’t get too enchanted, John. It can be expensive, you know.’
    â€˜Expensive?’
    â€˜If you have to buy them off – for a reason,’ said Robert.
    John had been warned off too, surprisingly, by Dahlia’s father. ‘We would please ask you, Captain Quillan, not to take our daughter Dahlia out any more.’
    â€˜Why not?’ John had been furious but Mr McGinty was not intimidated.
    â€˜Dahlia is our only child. We think she is beginning to love you very much and we know, and you know, what happens to girls like Dahlia.’
    â€˜You don’t know anything,’ John had said, ‘about this.’
    â€˜Don’t we? You are Captain Quillan of a famous regiment. Also you are A.D.C. at Government House. As soon as your superiors hear, conveniently you will be sent back to England. In our world we are used to broken promises and broken hearts, but please not for Dahlia.’ Mr McGinty was not angry, only sad.
    John was silent, then he asked, ‘Do you play chess, Mr McGinty?’
    â€˜Chess?’
    â€˜Yes. In chess there are Kings and Queens, Bishops, Knights – I’m not any of those – and pawns that can be moved any way the player likes. I am not a pawn, Mr McGinty.’
    Â 
    â€˜We have booked you a sleeper on the Blue Train tonight,’ said Colonel Maxwell. ‘
Tonight,
John. You sail on the
Orion
next Tuesday. His Excellency has written to your Colonel.’
    â€˜He could have saved himself the trouble,’ said John. ‘I have written to him myself. Sent in my papers.’
    â€˜John!’
    â€˜You see, I married Miss McGinty this morning.’
    â€˜You
what
?’ and then, as Max took it in, ‘You young fool!’
    â€˜Exactly the congratulation I thought I should get,’ said John.
    Â 
    â€˜He
was
a bloody fool,’ Michael told Annette. ‘No doubt about it; he could have paid the girl compensation, if he felt he had to do, as dozens of others have done. Maybe she had started a child, but he was let out of it already. Think, Annette, his father, grandfather, great-grandfather were all in the regiment, but John was always uncommonly quixotic.’
    â€˜Or uncommonly honourable. Odd,’ said Annette. ‘He always seemed so cynical and yet I remember him getting angry about things the rest of us just accepted, and I think,’ said Annette, ‘though he kept it hidden, he was the kindest young man I knew.’
    Â 
    On the quay this morning of October the sun was already hot. John’s bush shirt was sticking to his back, he could feel the sweat on his neck running down from the band of his felt hat. Dahlia would have liked him to wear a topee – to her the mark of the true English – she was always running after the bandar-log with the topees they too refused to wear, ‘and come to no harm,’ said John.
    Other trainers were waiting too but, after the first greeting, they kept apart. His, and their, Indian grooms, waiting to meet their new charges, squatted, gossiping and smoking; a hookah was passed round or biris, the small strong-smelling Indian cigarettes, were offered; some of the men chewed betel. An owner came down, obviously on his way to the office to speak to the popular Australian trainer, Dan Regan. He nodded to John then turned his back.
    On the railway siding a gang of twenty brown-skinned crop-headed bare-footed men in dirty loincloths formed up behind a closed iron goods wagon. Another brown man wearing a coat shouted an order and the gang broke into a chant: ‘
Hull
a lai,
Hull
a lai.’ The wagon wavered, swayed and began to move.
    Somewhere invisible a kite called kee-ee-ee, a sound