Chapter 2

And I ought to understand all about them. Come along home with me. I’m
on the Blessington lower road.”

To my intense delight the ‘rickshaw instead of waiting for us kept
about twenty yards ahead--and this, too whether we walked, trotted, or
cantered. In the course of that long night ride I had told my companion
almost as much as I have told you here.

“Well, you’ve spoiled one of the best tales I’ve ever laid tongue to,”
said he, “but I’ll forgive you for the sake of what you’ve gone through.
Now come home and do what I tell you; and when I’ve cured you,
young man, let this be a lesson to you to steer clear of women and
indigestible food till the day of your death.”

The ‘rickshaw kept steady in front; and my red-whiskered friend seemed
to derive great pleasure from my account of its exact whereabouts.

“Eyes, Pansay--all Eyes, Brain, and Stomach. And the greatest of these
three is Stomach. You’ve too much conceited Brain, too little Stomach,
and thoroughly unhealthy Eyes. Get your Stomach straight and the rest
follows. And all that’s French for a liver pill. I’ll take sole medical
charge of you from this hour! for you’re too interesting a phenomenon to
be passed over.”

By this time we were deep in the shadow of the Blessington lower road
and the ‘rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, over-hanging
shale cliff. Instinctively I halted too, giving my reason. Heatherlegh
rapped out an oath.

“Now, if you think I’m going to spend a cold night on the hillside
for the sake of a stomach-_cum_-Brain-_cum_-Eye illusion.... Lord, ha’
mercy! What’s that?”

There was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front
of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the
cliff-side--pines, undergrowth, and all--slid down into the road below,
completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a
moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell prone among their
fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two horses stood motionless and
sweating with fear. As soon as the rattle of falling earth and stone had
subsided, my companion muttered:--“Man, if we’d gone forward we should
have been ten feet deep in our graves by now. ‘There are more things
in heaven and earth.’... Come home, Pansay, and thank God. I want a peg
badly.”

We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I arrived at Dr.
Heatherlegh’s house shortly after midnight.

His attempts toward my cure commenced almost immediately, and for a week
I never left his sight. Many a time in the course of that week did I
bless the good-fortune which had thrown me in contact with Simla’s best
and kindest doctor. Day by day my spirits grew lighter and more equable.
Day by day, too, I became more and more inclined to fall in with
Heatherlegh’s “spectral illusion” theory, implicating eyes, brain, and
stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a slight sprain caused by a
fall from my horse kept me indoors for a few days; and that I should be
recovered before she had time to regret my absence.

Heatherlegh’s treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of liver
pills, cold-water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk or at
early dawn--for, as he sagely observed: “A man with a sprained ankle
doesn’t walk a dozen miles a day, and your young woman might be
wondering if she saw you.”

At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse, and
strict injunctions as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dismissed
me as brusquely as he had taken charge of me. Here is his parting
benediction: “Man, I can certify to your mental cure, and that’s as much
as to say I’ve cured most of your bodily ailments. Now, get your traps
out of this as soon as you can; and be off to make love to Miss Kitty.”

I was endeavoring to express my thanks for his kindness. He cut me
short.

“Don’t think I did this because I like you. I gather that you’ve behaved
like a blackguard all through. But, all the same, you’re a phenomenon,
and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard. No!”--checking me a
second time--“not a rupee, please. Go out and see if you can find the
eyes-brain-and-stomach business again. I’ll give you a lakh for each
time you see it.”

Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings’ drawing-room with
Kitty--drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the
fore-knowledge that I should never more be troubled with Its hideous
presence. Strong in the sense of my new-found security, I proposed a
ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.

Never had I felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere animal
spirits, as I did on the afternoon of the 30th of April. Kitty was
delighted at the change in my appearance, and complimented me on it in
her delightfully frank and outspoken manner. We left the Mannerings’
house together, laughing and talking, and cantered along the Chota Simla
road as of old.

I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir and there make my
assurance doubly sure. The horses did their best, but seemed all too
slow to my impatient mind. Kitty was astonished at my boisterousness.
“Why, Jack!” she cried at last, “you are behaving like a child. What are
you doing?”

We were just below the Convent, and from sheer wantonness I was making
my Waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it with the loop
of my riding-whip.

“Doing?” I answered; “nothing, dear. That’s just it. If you’d been doing
nothing for a week except lie up, you’d be as riotous as I.”

“‘Singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth,
Joying to feel yourself alive;
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible Earth,
Lord of the senses five.’”

My quotation was hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the corner
above the Convent; and a few yards further on could see across to
Sanjowlie. In the centre of the level road stood the black and white
liveries, the yellow-paneled ‘rickshaw, and Mrs. Keith-Wessington.
I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and, I believe must have said
something. The next thing I knew was that I was lying face downward on
the road with Kitty kneeling above me in tears.

“Has it gone, child!” I gasped. Kitty only wept more bitterly.

“Has what gone, Jack dear? what does it all mean? There must be a
mistake somewhere, Jack. A hideous mistake.” Her last words brought me
to my feet--mad--raving for the time being.

“Yes, there is a mistake somewhere,” I repeated, “a hideous mistake.
Come and look at It.”

I have an indistinct idea that I dragged Kitty by the wrist along the
road up to where It stood, and implored her for pity’s sake to speak to
It; to tell It that we were betrothed; that neither Death nor Hell could
break the tie between us; and Kitty only knows how much more to the
same effect. Now and again I appealed passionately to the Terror in the
‘rickshaw to bear witness to all I had said, and to release me from
a torture that was killing me. As I talked I suppose I must have told
Kitty of my old relations with Mrs. Wessington, for I saw her listen
intently with white face and blazing eyes.

“Thank you, Mr. Pansay,” she said, “that’s _quite_ enough. _Syce ghora
láo._”

The syces, impassive as Orientals always are, had come up with the
recaptured horses; and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught hold of
the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive. My answer was the
cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth to eye, and a word
or two of farewell that even now I cannot write down. So I judged, and
judged rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I staggered back to the side
of the ‘rickshaw. My face was cut and bleeding, and the blow of the
riding-whip had raised a livid blue wheal on it. I had no self-respect.
Just then, Heatherlegh, who must have been following Kitty and me at a
distance, cantered up.

“Doctor,” I said, pointing to my face, “here’s Miss Mannering’s
signature to my order of dismissal and... I’ll thank you for that lakh
as soon as convenient.”

Heatherlegh’s face, even in my abject misery, moved me to laughter.

“I’ll stake my professional reputation”--he began.

“Don’t be a fool,” I whispered. “I’ve lost my life’s happiness and you’d
better take me home.”

As I spoke the ‘rickshaw was gone. Then I lost all knowledge of what was
passing. The crest of Jakko seemed to heave and roll like the crest of a
cloud and fall in upon me.

Seven days later (on the 7th of May, that is to say) I was aware that I
was lying in Heatherlegh’s room as weak as a little child. Heatherlegh
was watching me intently from behind the papers on his writing-table.
His first words were not encouraging; but I was too far spent to be much
moved by them.

“Here’s Miss Kitty has sent back your letters. You corresponded a good
deal, you young people. Here’s a packet that looks like a ring, and
a cheerful sort of a note from Mannering Papa, which I’ve taken the
liberty of reading and burning. The old gentleman’s not pleased with
you.”

“And Kitty?” I asked, dully.

“Rather more drawn than her father from what she says. By the same token
you must have been letting out any number of queer reminiscences just
before I met you. ‘Says that a man who would have behaved to a woman as
you did to Mrs. Wessington ought to kill himself out of sheer pity for
his kind. She’s a hot-headed little virago, your mash. ‘Will have it
too that you were suffering from D. T. when that row on the Jakko road
turned up. ‘Says she’ll die before she ever speaks to you again.”

I groaned and turned over to the other side.

“Now you’ve got your choice, my friend. This engagement has to be broken
off; and the Mannerings don’t want to be too hard on you. Was it broken
through D. T. or epileptic fits? Sorry I can’t offer you a better
exchange unless you’d prefer hereditary insanity. Say the word and I’ll
tell ‘em it’s fits. All Simla knows about that scene on the Ladies’
Mile. Come! I’ll give you five minutes to think over it.”

During those five minutes I believe that I explored thoroughly the
lowest circles of the Inferno which it is permitted man to tread on
earth. And at the same time I myself was watching myself faltering
through the dark labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair.
I wondered, as Heatherlegh in his chair might have wondered, which
dreadful alternative I should adopt. Presently I heard myself answering
in a voice that I hardly recognized,--

“They’re confoundedly particular about morality in these parts. Give ‘em
fits, Heatherlegh, and my love. Now let me sleep a bit longer.”

Then my two selves joined, and it was only I (half crazed, devil-driven
I) that tossed in my bed, tracing step by step the history of the past
month.

“But I am in Simla,” I kept repeating to myself. “I, Jack Pansay, am in
Simla and there are no ghosts here. It’s unreasonable of that woman to
pretend there are. Why couldn’t Agnes have left me alone? I never did
her any harm. It might just as well have been me as Agnes. Only I’d
never have come hack on purpose to kill _her_. Why can’t I be left
alone--left alone and happy?”

It was high noon when I first awoke: and the sun was low in the sky
before I slept--slept as the tortured criminal sleeps on his rack, too
worn to feel further pain.

Next day I could not leave my bed. Heatherlegh told me in the morning
that he had received an answer from Mr. Mannering, and that, thanks to
his (Heatherlegh’s) friendly offices, the story of my affliction had
traveled through the length and breadth of Simla, where I was on all
sides much pitied.

“And that’s rather more than you deserve,” he concluded, pleasantly,
“though the Lord knows you’ve been going through a pretty severe mill.
Never mind; we’ll cure you yet, you perverse phenomenon.”

I declined firmly to be cured. “You’ve been much too good to me already,
old man,” said I; “but I don’t think I need trouble you further.”

In my heart I knew that nothing Heatherlegh could do would lighten the
burden that had been laid upon me.

With that knowledge came also a sense of hopeless, impotent rebellion
against the unreasonableness of it all. There were scores of men no
better than I whose punishments had at least been reserved for another
world; and I felt that it was bitterly, cruelly unfair that I alone
should have been singled out for so hideous a fate. This mood would in
time give place to another where it seemed that the ‘rickshaw and I were
the only realities in a world of shadows; that Kitty was a ghost; that
Mannering, Heatherlegh, and all the other men and women I knew were all
ghosts; and the great, grey hills themselves but vain shadows devised
to torture me. From mood to mood I tossed backward and forward for
seven weary days; my body growing daily stronger and stronger, until the
bedroom looking-glass told me that I had returned to everyday life, and
was as other men once more. Curiously enough my face showed no signs
of the struggle I had gone through. It was pale indeed, but as
expression-less and commonplace as ever. I had expected some permanent
alteration--visible evidence of the disease that was eating me away. I
found nothing.

On the 15th of May, I left Heatherlegh’s house at eleven o’clock in the
morning; and the instinct of the bachelor drove me to the Club. There I
found that every man knew my story as told by Heatherlegh, and was, in
clumsy fashion, abnormally kind and attentive. Nevertheless I recognized
that for the rest of my natural life I should be among but not of my
fellows; and I envied very bitterly indeed the laughing coolies on
the Mall below. I lunched at the Club, and at four o’clock wandered
aimlessly down the Mall in the vague hope of meeting Kitty. Close to
the Band-stand the black and white liveries joined me; and I heard Mrs.
Wessington’s old appeal at my side. I had been expecting this ever since
I came out; and was only surprised at her delay. The phantom ‘rickshaw
and I went side by side along the Chota Simla road in silence. Close to
the bazar, Kitty and a man on horseback overtook and passed us. For any
sign she gave I might have been a dog in the road. She did not even pay
me the compliment of quickening her pace; though the rainy afternoon had
served for an excuse.

So Kitty and her companion, and I and my ghostly Light-o’-Love, crept
round Jakko in couples. The road was streaming with water; the pines
dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks below, and the air was full of
fine, driving rain. Two or three times I found myself saying to myself
almost aloud: “I’m Jack Pansay on leave at Simla--_at Simla_! Everyday,
ordinary Simla. I mustn’t forget that--I mustn’t forget that.” Then I
would try to recollect some of the gossip I had heard at the Club: the
prices of So-and-So’s horses--anything, in fact, that related to
the workaday Anglo-Indian world I knew so well. I even repeated the
multiplication-table rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was
not taking leave of my senses. It gave me much comfort; and must have
prevented my hearing Mrs. Wessington for a time.

Once more I wearily climbed the Convent slope and entered the level
road. Here Kitty and the man started off at a canter, and I was left
alone with Mrs. Wessington. “Agnes,” said I, “will you put back your
hood and tell me what it all means?” The hood dropped noiselessly, and
I was face to face with my dead and buried mistress. She was wearing
the dress in which I had last seen her alive; carried the same tiny
handkerchief in her right hand; and the same cardcase in her left. (A
woman eight months dead with a cardcase!) I had to pin myself down to
the multiplication-table, and to set both hands on the stone parapet of
the road, to assure myself that that at least was real.

“Agnes,” I repeated, “for pity’s sake tell me what it all means.” Mrs.
Wessington leaned forward, with that odd, quick turn of the head I used
to know so well, and spoke.

If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all human
belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no one--no, not
even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of justification of
my conduct--will believe me, I will go on. Mrs. Wessington spoke and
I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road to the turning below the
Commander-in-Chief’s house as I might walk by the side of any living
woman’s ‘rickshaw, deep in conversation. The second and most tormenting
of my moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the
Prince in Tennyson’s poem, “I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts.”
There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief’s, and we two
joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them then it seemed
that _they_ were the shadows--impalpable, fantastic shadows--that
divided for Mrs. Wessington’s ‘rickshaw to pass through. What we said
during the course of that weird interview I cannot--indeed, I dare
not--tell. Heatherlegh’s comment would have been a short laugh and a
remark that I had been “mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera.” It was
a ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear experience.
Could it be possible, I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a
second time the woman I had killed by my own neglect and cruelty?

I met Kitty on the homeward road--a shadow among shadows.

If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in their
order, my story would never come to an end; and your patience would be
exhausted. Morning after morning and evening after evening the ghostly
‘rickshaw and I used to wander through Simla together. Wherever I went
there the four black and white liveries followed me and bore me company
to and from my hotel. At the Theatre I found them amid the crowd or
yelling _jhampanies_; outside the Club veranda, after a long evening of
whist; at the Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance; and
in broad daylight when I went calling. Save that it cast no shadow, the
‘rickshaw was in every respect as real to look upon as one of wood and
iron. More than once, indeed, I have had to check myself from warning
some hard-riding friend against cantering over it. More than once I have
walked down the Mall deep in conversation with Mrs. Wessington to the
unspeakable amazement of the passers-by.

Before I had been out and about a week I learned that the “fit” theory
had been discarded in favor of insanity. However, I made no change in my
mode of life. I called, rode, and dined out as freely as ever. I had
a passion for the society of my kind which I had never felt before; I
hungered to be among the realities of life; and at the same time I
felt vaguely unhappy when I had been separated too long from my ghostly
companion. It would be almost impossible to describe my varying moods
from the 15th of May up to to-day.

The presence of the ‘rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind
fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave
Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew, moreover,
that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. My only
anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as might be. Alternately
I hungered for a sight of Kitty and watched her outrageous flirtations
with my successor--to speak more accurately, my successors--with amused
interest. She was as much out of my life as I was out of hers. By day I
wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By night I implored Heaven
to let me return to the world as I used to know it. Above all these
varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the Seen
and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one
poor soul to its grave.

* * * * *

_August 27._--Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance on
me; and only yesterday told me that I ought to send in an application
for sick leave. An application to escape the company of a phantom! A
request that the Government would graciously permit me to get rid of
five ghosts and an airy ‘rickshaw by going to England. Heatherlegh’s
proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I told him that I
should await the end quietly at Simla; and I am sure that the end is not
far off. Believe me that I dread its advent more than any word can say;
and I torture myself nightly with a thousand speculations as to the
manner of my death.

Shall I die in my bed decently and as an English gentleman should die;
or, in one last walk on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched from me to
take its place forever and ever by the side of that ghastly phantasm?
Shall I return to my old lost allegiance in the next world, or shall
I meet Agnes loathing her and bound to her side through all eternity?
Shall we two hover over the scene of our lives till the end of Time?
As the day of my death draws nearer, the intense horror that all living
flesh feels toward escaped spirits from beyond the grave grows more and
more powerful. It is an awful thing to go down quick among the dead with
scarcely one-half of your life completed. It is a thousand times more
awful to wait as I do in your midst, for I know not what unimaginable
terror. Pity me, at least on the score of my “delusion,” for I know you
will never believe what I have written here. Yet as surely as ever a man
was done to death by the Powers of Darkness I am that man.

In justice, too, pity her. For as surely as ever woman was killed by
man, I killed Mrs. Wessington. And the last portion of my punishment is
ever now upon me.

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY

As I came through the Desert thus it was--
As I came through the Desert.
--_The City of Dreadful Night._

Somewhere in the Other World, where there are books and pictures and
plays and shop windows to look at, and thousands of men who spend their
lives in building up all four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories
about the real insides of people; and his name is Mr. Walter Besant.
But he will insist upon treating his ghosts--he has published half
a workshopful of them--with levity. He makes his ghost-seers talk
familiarly, and, in some cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms.
You may treat anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular Paper, with
levity; but you must behave reverently toward a ghost, and particularly
an Indian one.

There are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby
corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler passes.
Then they drop upon his neck and remain. There are also terrible ghosts
of women who have died in child-bed. These wander along the pathways at
dusk, or hide in the crops near a village, and call seductively. But to
answer their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet are
turned backward that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts
of little children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well
curbs and the fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch
women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the
corpse ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack
Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have
frightened an Englishman; but many English ghosts have scared the life
out of both white and black.

Nearly every other Station owns a ghost. There are said to be two
at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree
dâk-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very
lively Thing; a White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a
house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her houses “repeats” on
autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice
accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept
by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers’
Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose
furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with
the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawur
possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is
something--not fever--wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad. The older
Provinces simply bristle with haunted houses, and march phantom armies
along their main thoroughfares.

Some of the dâk-bungalows on the Grand Trunk Road have handy little
cemeteries in their compound--witnesses to the “changes and chances
of this mortal life” in the days when men drove from Calcutta to the
Northwest. These bungalows are objectionable places to put up in.
They are generally very old, always dirty, while the _khansamah_ is as
ancient as the bungalow. He either chatters senilely, or falls into the
long trances of age. In both moods he is useless. If you get angry with
him, he refers to some Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and
says that when he was in that Sahib’s service not a _khansamah_ in the
Province could touch him. Then he jabbers and mows and trembles and
fidgets among the dishes, and you repent of your irritation.

In these dâk-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and when
found, they should be made a note of. Not long ago it was my business to
live in dâk-bungalows. I never inhabited the same house for three
nights running, and grew to be learned in the breed. I lived in
Government-built ones with red brick walls and rail ceilings, an
inventory of the furniture posted in every room, and an excited snake at
the threshold to give welcome. I lived in “converted” ones--old houses
officiating as dâk-bungalows--where nothing was in its proper place
and there wasn’t even a fowl for dinner. I lived in second-hand
palaces where the wind blew through open-work marble tracery just as
uncomfortably as through a broken pane. I lived in dâk-bungalows where
the last entry in the visitors’ book was fifteen months old, and where
they slashed off the curry-kid’s head with a sword. It was my good
luck to meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling missionaries and
deserters flying from British Regiments, to drunken loafers who threw
whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still greater good fortune just
to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair proportion of the tragedy
of our lives out here acted itself in dâk-bungalows, I wondered that
I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would voluntarily hang about a
dâk-bungalow would be mad of course; but so many men have died mad in
dâk-bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts.

In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts rather, for there were two of
them. Up till that hour I had sympathized with Mr. Besant’s method of
handling them, as shown in “The Strange Case of Mr. Lucraft and Other
Stories.” I am now in the Opposition.

We will call the bungalow Katmal dâk-bungalow. But THAT was the smallest
part of the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in
dâk-bungalows. He should marry. Katmal dâk-bungalow was old and rotten
and unrepaired. The floor was of worn brick, the walls were filthy, and
the windows were nearly black with grime. It stood on a bypath largely
used by native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to
Forests; but real Sahibs were rare. The _khansamah_, who was nearly bent
double with old age, said so.

When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the
land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a noise
like the rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy palms outside.