The next morning after I had had my early tea--at Mrs. de Castro's it was not tea but excellent Mysore coffee--I tied up the reproachful Kipper in the veranda, and received instructions as to the route from my hostess, who escorted me to the entrance, still wearing a bed jacket and red felt slippers.
"You'll just go round this corner"--(ours was a corner house)--"up on to the Cubbon Road, past the magazine, and then turn into the Petta Road; walk along that till you come to Government Offices, the D.P.W.--my husband was a clerk in them--go round that corner, and you'll find yourself on the way that leads to the racecourse--the jail is on your left. The whole distance isn't more than a mile and a quarter. I expect people will think it strange to see a nice-looking young lady like you tramping about in the dust all by herself; they'll be wondering who you are, and what's your business. I'm sure Mrs. Cotton and Mrs. Dicks, my neighbours, will do their dead best to dig it out of me, but I can be as close as a snail. Well, well," she concluded, "mind you don't stay out too long in the sun." And with this adjuration she left me.
I had resolved on, yet dreaded, this expedition, knowing that to see even the outside of the place where Ronnie was imprisoned would fill me with sickening horror; but the longer I deferred the excursion the more reluctant I should be to face it. I reasoned down my antipathy and shrinking, and urged myself not to be a fool. Was I not living in Bangalore solely to be near Ronnie? And I wished him to know what would surely comfort him: that I was within reach.
It was a delightfully fresh morning as I started forth and took a short cut over the maidan. In the distance I noticed a regiment on parade and a number of people riding. As I made my way across the track a girl passed me, galloping along with a radiant face. How she was enjoying herself! Six weeks ago and I had been as she! but now, I seemed to have lost my identity.
Leaving the maidan behind me, I turned into the Petta Road and, at the end of a short walk, found myself outside the precincts of the jail. After considerable delay I was admitted by a warder, ushered into a large, bare, whitewashed room, and invited to state my business.