Tales from the Dead of Night

by Cecily Gayford

  While my Waler was cautiously feeling his way over the loose shale, and Kitty was laughing and chattering at my side – while all Simla, that is to say as much of it as had then come from the Plains, was grouped round the reading room and Peliti’s veranda, – I was aware that someone, apparently at a vast distance, was calling me by my Christian name. It struck me that I had heard the voice before, but when and where I could not at once determine. In the short space it took to cover the road between the path from Hamilton’s shop and the first plank of the Combermere Bridge I had thought over half a dozen people who might have committed such a solecism, and had eventually decided that it must have been singing in my ears. Immediately opposite Peliti’s shop my eye was arrested by the sight of four jhampanies in black and white livery, pulling a yellow-panelled, cheap, bazaar ’rickshaw. In a moment my mind flew back to the previous season and Mrs Wessington with a sense of irritation and disgust. Was it not enough that the woman was dead and done with, without her black and white servitors reappearing to spoil the day’s happiness? Whoever employed them now I thought I would call upon, and ask as a personal favour to change her jhampanies’ livery. I would hire the men myself and, if necessary, buy their coats from off their backs. It is impossible to say here what a flood of undesirable memories their presence evoked.

  ‘Kitty,’ I cried, ‘there are poor Mrs Wessington’s jhampanies turned up again! I wonder who has them now?’

  Kitty had known Mrs Wessington slightly last season and had always been interested in the sickly woman.

  ‘What? Where?’ she asked. ‘I can’t see them anywhere.’

  Even as she spoke her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw himself directly in front of the advancing ’rickshaw. I had scarcely time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror, horse and rider passed through men and carriage as if they had been thin air.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ cried Kitty; ‘what made you call out so foolishly, Jack? If I am engaged I don’t want all creation to know about it. There was lots of space between the mule and the veranda; and, if you think I can’t ride – there!’

  Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the direction of the bandstand; fully expecting, as she herself afterwards told me, that I should follow her. What was the matter? Nothing indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or that Simla was haunted with devils. I reined in my impatient cob and turned round. The ’rickshaw had turned, too, and now stood immediately facing me, near the left railing of the Combermere Bridge.

  ‘Jack! Jack, darling.’ (There was no mistake about the words this time: they rang through my brain as if they had been shouted in my ear.) ‘It’s some hideous mistake, I’m sure. Please forgive me, Jack, and let’s be friends again.’

  The ’rickshaw hood had fallen back and inside, as I hope and pray daily for the death I dread by night, sat Mrs Keith-Wessington, handkerchief in hand and golden head bowed on her breast.

  How long I stared motionless I do not know. Finally, I was aroused by my groom taking the Waler’s bridle and asking whether I was ill. I tumbled off my horse and dashed, half fainting, into Peliti’s for a glass of cherry brandy. There two or three couples were gathered round the coffee tables discussing the gossip of the day. Their trivialities were more comforting to me just then than the consolations of religion could have been. I plunged into the midst of the conversation at once; chatted, laughed and jested with a face (when I caught a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white and drawn as that of a corpse. Three or four men noticed my condition; and, evidently setting it down to the results of over-many pegs, charitably endeavoured to draw me apart from the rest of the loungers. But I refused to be led away. I wanted the company of my kind – as a child rushes into the midst of the dinner party after a fright in the dark. I must have talked for about ten minutes or so, though it seemed an eternity to me, when I heard Kitty’s clear voice outside enquiring for me. In another minute she had entered the shop, prepared to roundly upbraid me for failing so signally in my duties. Something in my face stopped her.

  ‘Why, Jack,’ she cried, ‘what have you been doing? What has happened? Are you ill?’ Thus driven into a direct lie, I said that the sun had been a little too much for me. It was close upon five o’clock of a cloudy April afternoon, and the sun had been hidden all day. I saw my mistake as soon as the words were out of my mouth; attempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed Kitty, in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my acquaintances. I made some excuse (I have forgotten what) on the score of my feeling faint; and cantered away to my hotel, leaving Kitty to finish the ride by herself.

  In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter. Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal civilian in the year of grace 1885, presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from my sweetheart’s side by the apparition of a woman who had been dead and buried eight months ago. These were facts that I could not blink. Nothing was further from my thought than any memory of Mrs Wessington when Kitty and I left Hamilton’s shop. Nothing was more utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti’s. It was broad daylight. The road was full of people; and yet here, look you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of Nature’s ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.

  Kitty’s Arab had gone through the ’rickshaw; so that my first hope that some woman marvellously like Mrs Wessington had hired the carriage and the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and again I went round this treadmill of thought; and again and again gave up baffled and in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as the apparition. I had originally some wild notion of confiding it all to Kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in her arms defying the ghostly occupant of the ’rickshaw. ‘After all,’ I argued, ‘the presence of the ’rickshaw is in itself enough to prove the existence of a spectral illusion. One may see ghosts of men and women, but surely never of coolies and carriages. The whole thing is absurd. Fancy the ghost of a hill-man!’

  Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to overlook my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. My divinity was still very wroth and a personal apology was necessary. I explained, with a fluency born of night-long pondering over a falsehood, that I had been attacked with sudden palpitation of the heart – the result of indigestion. This eminently practical solution had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out that afternoon with the shadow of my first lie dividing us.

  Nothing would please her save a canter round Jakko. With my nerves still unstrung from the previous night I feebly protested against the notion, suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge road – anything rather than the Jakko round. Kitty was angry and a little hurt, so I yielded from fear of provoking further misunderstanding, and we set out together towards Chota Simla. We walked a greater part of the way, and, according to our custom, cantered from a mile or so below the convent to the stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as we neared the crest of the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs Wessington all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore witness to our old-time walks and talks. The boulders were full of it; the pines sang it aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrents giggled and chuckled unseen over the shameful story; and the wind in my ears chanted the iniquity aloud.

  As a fitting climax, in the middle of the level men call the Ladies’ Mile the Horror was awaiting me. No other ’rickshaw was in sight – only the four black and white jhampanies, the yellow-panelled carriage and the golden head of the woman within – all apparently just as I had left them eight months and one fortnight ago! For an instant I fancied that Kitty must see what I saw – we were so marvellously sympathetic in all things. Her next words undeceived me – ‘Not a soul in sight! Come along, Jack, and I’ll race you to the reservoir buildings!’ Her wiry little Arab was off like a bird, my Waler following close
behind, and in this order we dashed under the cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty yards of the ’rickshaw. I pulled my Waler and fell back a little. The ’rickshaw was directly in the middle of the road: and once more the Arab passed through it, my horse following. ‘Jack! Jack, dear! Please forgive me,’ rang with a wail in my ears, and, after an interval, ‘It’s a mistake, a hideous mistake!’

  I spurred my horse like a man possessed. When I turned my head at the reservoir works, the black and white liveries were still waiting – patiently waiting – under the grey hillside, and the wind brought me a mocking echo of the words I had just heard. Kitty bantered me a good deal on my silence throughout the remainder of the ride. I had been talking up till then wildly and at random. To save my life I could not speak afterwards naturally, and from Sanjowlie to the church wisely held my tongue.

  I was to dine with the Mannerings that night and had barely time to canter home to dress. On the road to Elysium Hill I overheard two men talking together in the dusk. – ‘It’s a curious thing,’ said one, ‘how completely all trace of it disappeared. You know my wife was insanely fond of the woman (never could see anything in her myself) and wanted me to pick up her old ’rickshaw and coolies if they were to be got for love or money. Morbid sort of fancy I call it, but I’ve got to do what the Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all four of the men, they were brothers, died of cholera, on the way to Hardwar, poor devils; and the ’rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. Told me he never used a dead Memsahib’s ’rickshaw. Spoilt his luck. Queer notion, wasn’t it? Fancy poor little Mrs Wessington spoiling any one’s luck except her own!’ I laughed aloud at this point; and my laugh jarred on me as I uttered it. So there were ghosts of ’rickshaws after all, and ghostly employments in the other world! How much did Mrs Wessington give her men? What were their hours? Where did they go?

  And for visible answer to my last question I saw the infernal thing blocking my path in the twilight. The dead travel fast and by short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I laughed aloud a second time and checked my laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was going mad. Mad to a certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that I reined in my horse at the head of the ’rickshaw and politely wished Mrs Wessington ‘good evening’. Her answer was one I knew only too well. I listened to the end; and replied that I had heard it all before, but should be delighted if she had anything further to say. Some malignant devil stronger than I must have entered into me that evening, for I have a dim recollection of talking the commonplaces of the day for five minutes to the thing in front of me.

  ‘Mad as a hatter, poor devil – or drunk. Max, try and get him to come home.’

  Surely that was not Mrs Wessington’s voice! The two men had overheard me speaking to the empty air and had returned to look after me. They were very kind and considerate, and from their words evidently gathered that I was extremely drunk. I thanked them confusedly and cantered away to my hotel, there changed, and arrived at the Mannerings’ ten minutes late. I pleaded the darkness of the night as an excuse; was rebuked by Kitty for my unlover-like tardiness; and sat down.

  The conversation had already become general; and under cover of it, I was addressing some tender small talk to my sweetheart when I was aware that at the further end of the table a short red-whiskered man was describing, with much broidery, his encounter with a mad unknown that evening. A few sentences convinced me that he was repeating the incident of half an hour ago. In the middle of the story he looked round for applause, as professional storytellers do, caught my eye and straight away collapsed. There was a moment’s awkward silence, and the red-whiskered man muttered something to the effect that he had ‘forgotten the rest’, thereby sacrificing a reputation as a good storyteller which he had built up for six seasons past. I blessed him from the bottom of my heart, and – went on with my fish.

  In the fullness of time that dinner came to an end; and with genuine regret I tore myself away from Kitty – as certain as I was of my own existence that It would be waiting for me outside the door. The red-whiskered man, who had been introduced to me as Dr Heatherlegh of Simla, volunteered to bear me company as far as our roads lay together. I accepted his offer with gratitude.

  My instinct had not deceived me. It lay in readiness in the Mall, and, in what seemed devilish mockery of our ways, with a lighted headlamp. The red-whiskered man went to the point at once, in a manner that showed he had been thinking over it all dinner time.

  ‘I say, Pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysium road?’ The suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from me before I was aware.

  ‘That!’ said I, pointing to It.

  ‘That may be either DT or eyes for aught I know. Now you don’t liquor. I saw as much at dinner, so it can’t be DT. There’s nothing whatever where you’re pointing, though you’re sweating and trembling with fright like a scared pony. Therefore, I conclude that it’s eyes. 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 spoilt 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 Bless-ington 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 cliffside – 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 towards 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 ex
ercise, 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 endeavouring 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. Now, 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 foreknowledge that I should never more be troubled with Its hideous presence. Strong in the sense of my newfound security, I proposed a ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.

  Never have I felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere animal spirits, as I did on the afternoon of 30 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.