At that moment a telegraph-peon came in with a telegram from Simla, ordering Dumoise not to take over charge at Meridki, but to go at once to Nuddea on special duty. There was a nasty outbreak of cholera at Nuddea, and the Bengal Government being short-handed, as usual, had borrowed a Surgeon from the Punjab.
Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said – ‘Well?’
The other Doctor said nothing. It was all that he could say.
Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed through Simla on his way from Bagi; and thus might, possibly have heard first news of the impending transfer.
He tried to put the question and the implied suspicion into words, but Dumoise stopped him with – ‘If I had desired that,I should never have come back from Chini. I was shooting there. I wish to live, for I have things to do … but I shall not be sorry.’
The other man bowed his head, and helped, in the twilight to pack up Dumoise’s just opened trunks. Ram Dass entered with the lamps.
‘Where is the Sahib going?’ he asked.
‘To Nuddea,’ said Dumoise softly.
Ram Dass clawed Dumoise’s knees and boots and begged him not to go. Ram Dass wept and howled till he was turned out of the room. Then he wrapped up all his belongings and came back to ask for a character. He was not going to Nuddea to see his Sahib dieand, perhaps, to die himself.
So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went down to Nuddea alone, the other Doctor bidding him good-bye as one under sentence of death.
Eleven days later he had joined his Memsahib;and the Bengal Government had to borrow a fresh Doctor to cope with that epidemic at Nuddea. The first importation lay dead in Chooadanga dâk-Bungalow.
THE RECURRING SMASH
In himself, Penhelder was not striking. His worst enemies did not call him ugly, and his best friends handsome. But friends and enemies alike were interested in his Fate, which was unique. When he was three years old, he interrupted some moving operations with a pair of mottled chubby legs and bled, as his nurse said at the time ‘all round the hay-field in quarts.’ In his sixth year, he started on a voyage across the horse-pond: his galley being a crank hurdle, which, in mid-ocean, turned turtle, and but for the pig-killer, who happened to pass that way, he would certainly have been drowned. At nine years of age, he sat upon a wall like Humpty-Dumpty – a high wall meant to protect an apple-orchard – and like Humpty-Dumpty, fell, fracturing his collar bone. About this time, his family noticed the peculiarity of his Fate and commented upon it. Three years later, being at a Public School, Penhelder dropped from the trapeze in the gymnasium and broke one of the small bones in his leg. It was then discovered that every one of his previous accidents had occurred between the months of May and June. Penhelder was apprised of this and bidden to behave more seemly in the future. His conduct was without flaw or reproach till his fifteenth year, when the school dormitories caught fire and Penhelder, escaping in his nightgown, was severely burnt on the back and legs. He enjoyed the honour of being the only boy who had been touched by the flames. This saddened him and his family, but more especially his old nurse, who maintained that ‘her boy,’ as she lovingly called Penhelder, was ‘cast’ – a provincialism for bewitched. At eighteen he found himself in London. What he did then does not come into this story.
The end of a thirsty summer night, and indulgence in waters, to Penhelder, of entirely unknown strength, was, for some hours, a felon’s cell and ‘forty shillings or a month.’With the guilelessness of youth Penhelder had given his real name, and had the satisfaction of seeing it not only in the police reports of The Times but – and here the type was used much larger than his modesty demanded – in the market town weekly newspaper as well. It may be mentioned that Penhelder was the only one caught of a riotous gang. At one and twenty, Penhelder set foot in India, a solemn and serious boy, whose mind had been darkened by the shadow of his Fate. He was overheard by a man who afterwards came to know him intimately, muttering, as he set foot on the Apollo Bunder in the blazing May sunshine: ‘I hope it won’t be anything very serious’. It was not, but the Doctor said that it might have been most serious; and that young men who paraded Bombay in small hats deserved instant death instead of severe sunstroke merely.
Penhelder crept up-country to his station, and, in a weak moment told the story of his Fate even more circumstantially than has been set forth here. From that day he became an object of unholy interest to the gilded youth of the Army within a two hundred mile radius. They looked, like the islanders of Melita, that he should ‘fall down dead suddenly’, but their watch was in vain.
Late June of his twenty-fourth year saw Penhelder almost the sole occupant of a deserted station. But there were witnesses to attest the strange tale that follows. At dinner at the Club, one of the glass shades of a hanging lamp cracked with the heat, and a huge fragment fell hatchetwise across Penhelder’s left wrist, cutting it to the bone. ‘I told you so’, said Penhelder drearily, as the blood spurted over the tablecloth. The rest of the Company held their peace, for they remembered that for the past month Penhelder had been prophesying disaster of some sort to himself. The wound was a serious one and nearly ended in blood poisoning.
Three years later, Penhelder took warning in time, and as May drew near, retired into his own house and lived then thelife of an eremite. ‘If anything happens now’, said he, ‘it will be the roof falling in, and I don’t mind that. It will put me out of my misery’. But Penhelder had miscalculated. In summer it is necessary to drive to office. Penhelder hired an enormous ticca-gharri of dutch gallest beam, and unquestioned solidity, and yoked thereto the soberest horses that he could find. The turnout something resembled an ambulance in search of wounded, but Penhelder was deaf to the voice of sarcasm. What he demanded was safety. He secured it. It took him half an hour to reach his office, but he secured it. June had nearly ended and, in his delight, he stopped, ere going into his office, to pat the neck of one of the horses. There is a hideous description in Lorna Doone of great John Ridd tearing out the muscle of his enemy’s arm as though it had been orange pulp. The horse, indeed, tore out nothing, but he clung like a leech to the inner arm of Penhelder, high up and close to the armpit. A lighted match forced him to open his jaws, but Penhelder had fainted, and it was then months before he mixed with his friends – a moody, melancholy man, perplexed with the foreshadowing of his next visitation. ‘It’s not murder I object to’, said Penhelder, ‘it’s mangling’.
Time, chance and the Government parted me from Penhelder for many years, and he gradually faded out of my mind. But we met at Bombay a few weeks ago. I was introduced to Mrs Penhelder, a large lady. My friend’s face was drawn and haggard. I learnt that he was going Home for his health’s sake. ‘Have you – have you’, I whispered ‘had any return of – broken your run of bad luck that is to say?’ Penhelder hesitated for a moment. Then he drew me aside, ‘I’ve broken it’, he said, ‘But I married her on my thirtieth birthday. May the twenty-second it was’. And since that date I have in vain been trying to discover what on earth my friend Penhelder meant.
THE DREITARBUND
As a conspiracy it was infamous, and in the hands of unscrupulous men might have been dangerous, seeing how foolish women-folk are.
But, worked with circumspection, as Houligan, Marlowe and Bressil worked it, it secured to three dear sweet girls with money, the right of paying Houligan’s, Marlowe’s and Bressil’s bills for the rest of their days; and, as every one knows, all is fair in love or war. Houligan claimed and was allowed the honour of the Inspiration; Marlowe put fifty rupees into the pool, because he chanced to be the millionaire of the month; Bressil, like Mr Gigadibs, was a ‘literary man’ with no morals but exquisite tact, knowledge of fitting opportunity, which was more than the money or the idea. He was the Napoleon of the Bund, and his contribution was a book, in two volumes, called Phantasms of the Living, written by some of the members of the Psychical Research Society. Houligan had an Indian Telegraph Guide, and on this library and th
e fifty rupees, the Bund opened the campaign. Two men united can do a great deal, but a threefold cord can draw Heaven and Earth together.
The Bund was desperately poor, and, collectively, had not enough good features in it to make up one handsome countenance to go wooing with. It was unlucky in its love-affairs, for it failed to interest young women; and, even when it did, the parents said that it had better work and earn twelve hundred a month before calling again. On occasions like these, the Bund used to smoke vehemently and arrange for a revenge. Houligan’s ambition was to drive over Miss Norris’s father in his dogcart; Marlowe desired to poison Miss Emmett’s mamma; and Bressil, like Job, wished that Miss Yaulton’sbrother-in-law had written a book. But what they wanted most was honourable matrimony with Miss Norris, Miss Emmett and Miss Yaulton. All their angry feelings died away when the Bund was formed, quietly and without ostentation, on strictly practical lines and in thorough accordance with the principles laid down in Phantasms of the Living – Vide the chapter on Thought Transference, Brain-waves, Percipients and people of that kind. Houligan said that it was one thing to tell a girl that you were fond of her, when you were by her side, but that it was quite another, and a much more startling thing to prove, that you were fond of her when you were miles away. Once started, at Bressil’s instigation the Bund quarrelled violently and in public, broke up its chummery, and was dead cuts to the great interest of the Station. Everything, even down to the perverted English to be used for the communications, was cut and dried, and there was no further need of personal intercourse. The Bund devoted itself to laying siege to its chosen maidens in a dark and mysterious sort of way that made the latter laugh.
Houligan was transferred to a Station three hundred miles away, and Miss Norris laughed when she said goodbye. The type of Houligan’s love-making has not been made public. Miss Norris said that he used to talk strangely. She held to her opinion till she was attacked by a rather severe fever, after over-exertion at tennis, on a Friday afternoon. Twenty-four hours later, being then in bed, she received a hurried letter from Houligan, explaining that an ‘overmastering presentiment’ – that was the wrong word, but Houligan could never make head or tail of Phantasms of the Living – compelled him to write to her and ask if any trouble had overtaken her on Friday evening. He had had a feeling, an idea that she had suddenly fallen ill – had put the feeling from him as absurd, &c, but it had returned, &c. He was her devoted slave, and apologised for thus troubling her. From that date onward, Miss Norris never referred to the strangeness of her lover’s talk. She only wondered; told her parents, who wondered too, and thought a great deal of Houligan. Miss Emmett was of a different type from Miss Norris. She was nervous andhysterical by birth, and Marlowe always thought that her parents might have been won round in time. But another man appeared and began to make love to her – he was a man from the North-West – and the Emmetts were going to spend the summer at Naini Tal. Time and propinquity in a case like Miss Emmett meant everything. By this time, it should be explained, the pool stood at nearly four hundred rupees – the result of monthly contributions. There had been a drain upon it for Houligan’s benefit, in ‘private deferred’wires sketching the daily life of Miss Norris by the words of the Code – a lithographed MS, of seven hundred and thirty-two pages, compiled with extraordinary care. None the less, the pool kept up to an average of four hundred. Marlowe took it all and thrust it into Bressil’s hands, begging him to go to Naini Tal for ten days and draw on the pool if the money ran out. Bressil went when the Emmets moved, and Marlowe had said farewell to Miss Emmett, who was hesitating between her two admirers. Bressil was a genius in his ideas of combinations. After four days, he sent Marlowe a huge telegram, giving him the outlines of the action to take; and then began to beg and beseech Miss Emmett for a dance, at the next ball, which he well knew was a running one, given for the season to Marlowe’s rival. This sort of petition can be renewed at any time and hour, and unless she be bored to death, the petitioner is always pleased. Bressil renewed his request twice in one day. At dinner, his seat faced the door, he said, Apropos of nothing in particular, for the third time: – ‘Will you give me number seven. Miss Emmett?’ As he spoke, and as Miss Emmett was bridling, a servant put a telegram on her plate. She read it and began to scream, for the telegram was from Marlowe, and it said: – ‘No. To me and I’ll sit out with you in the spirit.’ Miss Emmett did not go to that dance. She was afraid – afraid of everything, but of Marlowe most of all. He followed up the telegram by a letter, many pages long, and was accepted by return of post. Miss Emmett was nervous and hysterical, but she made a good wife; and her parents were very respectful to Marlowe. They quoted a play called Ingomar and Parthenia, and also said that there were ‘morethings in Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of in their philosophy.’
Houligan never had the heart to indulge in another ‘presentiment’. He wooed on his own merits after Miss Norris’s fever; but was accepted chiefly on account of the presentiment. Miss Norris was a healthy young lady, but she was deeply touched by the idea of a man who watched over her from afar. So were her parents. These two couples married, and Bressil was left to make way with Miss Yaulton, who was a most difficult maiden. She believed in ‘missions’, and ‘spheres’, and ‘destinies’, and held that her destiny was to drift away from Bressil and become a ‘woman working for women’ at Home. She was different from the average of Anglo-Indian girls. She said Bressil was a ‘very dear friend’, but she could never marry him; for his work lay in India and hers in England. They met on a high and spiritual platform, which was not what Bressil wanted. Then they parted for no earthly reason, except Miss Yaulton’s ideas; and Bressil was miserable. Houligan and Marlowe had taken their wives Home, and were beginning to be loved for themselves and not for their mediumistic attainments. Bressil assumed that the Dreitarbund was dead. He had helped Houligan and Marlowe to their wives, and Fate had not put them in a position to help him. That was all. The pool was empty and the Codes were lost. All that remained to him was Miss Yaulton’s address. But the Dreitarbund was only suspended for a while. The Houligans met Miss Yaulton at a big country-house in Wiltshire. She had not found her mission or sphere, nor had she forgotten Bressil. There was a riding-party over the downs, and Miss Yaulton, being, as you will have seen by this time, as obstinate as a mule, insisted on riding a big black horse that was not fit for a lady. In consequence, she was bolted with and nearly thrown.
For this reason she announced her intention of riding the brute next morning, though all the house tried to dissuade her.
Houligan was not a clever man, but he fancied that he recognised in this the finger of Providence. He went away to the nearest town – a small one – and paralysed the local telegraph office by pouring in a Foreign Telegram, the like ofwhich had never been seen by the telegraph officials before. He spilt his words like water that nothing should be misunderstood, and paid for repetitions in a princely style. Altogether he spent £15-10 on the telegram, and alluded to many things beside the horse. No one knows what Bressil thought on receipt of it. He may have struggled with himself against the meanness of the trick, or he may not. He delayed several hours in sending his answer. At breakfast next morning in the Wiltshire country-house. Miss Yaulton, booted and habited, received Bressil’s message: – ‘For Heaven’s sake don’t ride Dandy.’ She did not. She took the telegram into her own room and recast her ideas on all ‘missions and destinies’ independent of Bressil. She also was awed; but her awe was different from the nervous dread of Miss Emmett, or the frightened bewilderment of Miss Norris. She sent back a three-word telegram to Bressil that drew him to England and then … and then the Dreitarbund really died.
Houligan admits the immorality in the abstract of the work of the Bund. But he says that other Bunds have been much worse, and that ‘if the Psychical Research Society pops a good notion into your head, why on earth shouldn’t you work it out?’
BUBBLING WELL ROAD
Look out on a large scale map the pl
ace where the Chenab river falls into the Indus fifteen miles or so above the hamlet of Chachuran. Five miles west of Chachuran lives Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the gosain or priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road, but it is no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story.
Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that turns over in silver when the wind blows, from ten to twenty feet high and from three to four miles square. In the heart of the patch hides the gosain of Bubbling Well Road. The villagers stone him when he peers into the daylight, although he is a priest, and he runs back again as a strayed wolf turns into tall crops. He is a one-eyed man and carries, burnt between his brows, the impress of two copper coins. Some say that he was tortured by a native prince in the old days; for he is so old that he must have been capable of mischief in the days of Runjit Singh. His most pressing need at present is a halter, and the care of the British Government.
These things happened when the jungle-grass was tall; and the villagers of Chachuran told me that a sounder of pig had gone into the Arti-goth patch. To enter jungle-grass is always an unwise proceeding, but I went, partly because I knew nothing of pig-hunting, and partly because the villagers said that the big boar of the sounder owned foot long tushes. Therefore I wished to shoot him, in order to produce the tushes in after years, and say that I had ridden him down in fair chase. I took a gun and went into the hot, close patch, believing that it would be an easy thing to unearth one pig in ten square miles of jungle. Mr Wardle, the terrier, went with mebecause he believed that I was incapable of existing for an hour without his advice and countenance. He managed to slip in and out between the grass clumps, but I had to force my way, and in twenty minutes was as completely lost as though I had been in the heart of Central Africa. I did not notice this at first till I had grown wearied of stumbling and pushing through the grass, and Mr Wardle was beginning to sit down very often and hang out his tongue very far. There was nothing but grass everywhere, and it was impossible to see two yards in any direction. The grass stems held the heat exactly as boiler-tubes do.