The Penguin Book of English Short Stories

by Christopher Dolley

‘What’s wrong now?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Lowndes gathered up his whip, and, as he flicked Mottram’s mare on the flank, added, ‘You’re not a bad little chap, – that’s all.’ And the mare bolted half a mile across the sand, on the word.

  In the assistant engineer’s bungalow Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe of silence together, each narrowly watching the other. The capacity of a bachelor’s establishment is as elastic as its arrangements are simple. A servant cleared away the dining-room table, brought in a couple of rude native bedsteads made of tape strung on a light wood frame, flung a square of cool Calcutta matting over each, set them side by side, pinned two towels to the punkah so that their fringes should just sweep clear of the sleeper’s nose and mouth, and announced that the couches were ready.

  The men flung themselves down, ordering the punkahcoolies by all the powers of Hell to pull. Every door and window was shut, for the outside air was that of an oven. The atmosphere within was only 104 degrees, as the thermometer bore witness, and heavy with the foul smell of badly-trimmed kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined with that of native tobacco, baked brick, and dried earth, sends the heart of many a strong man down to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian Empire when she turns herself for six months into a house of torment. Spurstow packed his pillows craftily so that he reclined rather than lay, his head at a safe elevation above his feet. It is not good to sleep on a low pillow in the hot weather if you happen to be of thick-necked build, for you may pass with lively snores and gugglings from natural sleep into the deep slumber of heat-apoplexy.

  ‘Pack your pillows,’ said the doctor sharply, as he saw Hummil preparing to lie down at full length.

  The night-light was trimmed; the shadow of the punkah wavered across the room, and the ‘flick’ of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of the rope through the wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah flagged, almost ceased. The sweat poured from Spurstow’s brow. Should he go out and harangue the coolie? It started forward again with a savage jerk, and a pin came out of the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in the coolie-lines began to beat with the steady throb of a swollen artery inside some brain-fevered skull. Spurstow turned on his side and swore gently. There was no movement on Hummil’s part. The man had composed himself as rigidly as a corpse, his hands clinched at his sides. The respiration was too hurried for any suspicion of sleep. Spurstow looked at the set face. The jaws were clinched, and there was a pucker round the quivering eyelids.

  ‘He’s holding himself as tightly as ever he can,’ thought Spurstow. ‘What in the world is the matter with him? – Hummil!’

  ‘Yes,’ in a thick constrained voice.

  ‘Can’t you get to sleep?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Head hot? Throat feeling bulgy? Or how?’

  ‘Neither, thanks. I don’t sleep much, you know.’

  ‘Feel pretty bad?’

  ‘Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tomtom outside, isn’t there? I thought it was my head at first. … Oh, Spurstow, for pity’s sake give me something that will put me asleep – sound asleep – if it’s only for six hours!’ He sprang up, trembling from head to foot. ‘I haven’t been able to sleep naturally for days, and I can’t stand it! – I can’t stand it’

  ‘Poor old chap!’

  ‘That’s no use. Give me something to make me sleep. I tell you I’m nearly mad. I don’t know what I say half my time. For three weeks I’ve had to think and spell out every word that has come through my lips before I dared say it. Isn’t that enough to drive a man mad? I can’t see things correctly now, and I’ve lost my sense of touch. My skin aches – my skin aches! Make me sleep. Oh, Spurstow, for the love of God make me sleep sound. It isn’t enough merely to let me dream. Let me sleep!’

  ‘All right, old man, all right. Go slow; you aren’t half as bad as you think.’

  The flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hummil was clinging to him like a frightened child. ‘You’re pinching my arm to pieces.’

  ‘I’ll break your neck if you don’t do something for me. No, I didn’t mean that. Don’t be angry, old fellow.’ He wiped the sweat off himself as he fought to regain composure. ‘I’m a bit restless and off my oats, and perhaps you could recommend some sort of sleeping mixture – bromide of potassium.’

  ‘Bromide of skittles! Why didn’t you tell me this before? Let go of my arm, and I’ll see if there’s anything in my cigarette-case to suit your complaint.’ Spurstow hunted among his day-clothes, turned up the lamp, opened a little silver cigarette-case, and advanced on the expectant Hummil with the daintiest of fairy squirts.

  ‘The last appeal of civilization,’ said he, ‘and a thing I hate to use. Hold out your arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn’t ruined your muscle; and what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a buffalo subcutaneously. Now in a few minutes the morphia will begin working. Lie down and wait.’

  A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began to creep over Hummil’s face. ‘I think,’ he whispered – ‘I think I’m going off now. Gad! it’s positively heavenly! Spurstow, you must give me that case to keep; you-’ The voice ceased as the head fell back.

  ‘Not for a good deal,’ said Spurstow to the unconscious form. ‘And now, my friend, sleeplessness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral fibre in little matters of life and death, I’ll just take the liberty of spiking your guns.’

  He paddled into Hummil’s saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the heel of a riding-boot.

  ‘That’s settled,’ he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. ‘These little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too much sympathy with gun-room accidents.’

  And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried in the doorway, ‘You fool!’

  Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to their friends a little before they die.

  Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil stood in the doorway, rocking with helpless laughter.

  ‘That was awf’ly good of you, I’m sure,’ he said, very slowly, feeling for his words. ‘I don’t intend to go out by my own hand at present. I say, Spurstow, that stuff won’t work. What shall I do? What shall I do?’ And panic terror stood in his eyes.

  ‘Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at once.’

  ‘I daren’t. It will only take me half-way again, and I shan’t be able to get away this time. Do you know it was all I could do to come out just now? Generally I am as quick as lightning; but you had clogged my feet. I was nearly caught.’

  ‘Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down.’

  ‘No, it isn’t delirium; but it was an awfully mean trick to play on me. Do you know I might have died?’

  As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had wiped out of Hummil’s face all that stamped it for the face of a man, and he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He had slept back into terrified childhood.

  ‘Is he going to die on the spot?’ thought Spurstow. Then, aloud, ‘All right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You couldn’t sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense?’

  ‘A place – a place down there,’ said Hummil, with simple sincerity. The drug was acting on him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of a strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves gathered sense or were dulled.

  ‘Good God! I’ve been afraid of it for months past, Spurstow. It has made every night hell to me; and yet I’m not conscious of having done anything wrong.’

  ‘Be still, and I’ll give you another dose. We’ll stop your nightmares, you unutterable idiot!’

  ‘Yes, but you must give me so much that I can’t get away. You must make me
quite sleepy – not just a little sleepy. It’s so hard to run then.’

  ‘I know it; I know it. I’ve felt it myself. The symptoms are exactly as you describe.’

  ‘Oh, don’t laugh at me, confound you! Before this awful sleeplessness came to me I’ve tried to rest on my elbow and put a spur in the bed to sting me when I fell back. Look!’

  ‘By Jove! the man has been rowelled like a horse! Ridden by the nightmare with a vengeance! And we all thought him sensible enough. Heaven send us understanding! You like to talk, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sometimes. Not when I’m frightened. Then I want to run. Don’t you?’

  ‘Always. Before I give you your second dose try to tell me exactly what your trouble is.’

  Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly ten minutes, whilst Spurstow looked into the pupils of his eyes and passed his hand before them once or twice.

  At the end of the narrative the silver cigarette-case was produced, and the last words that Hummil said as he fell back for the second time were, ‘Put me quite to sleep; for if I’m caught I die – I die!’

  ‘Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later – thank Heaven who has set a term to our miseries,’ said Spurstow, settling the cushions under the head. ‘It occurs to me that unless I drink something I shall go out before my time. I’ve stopped sweating, and – I wear a seventeen-inch collar.’ He brewed himself scalding hot tea, which is an excellent remedy against heat-apoplexy if you take three or four cups of it in time. Then he watched the sleeper.

  ‘A blind face that cries and can’t wipe its eyes, a blind face that chases him down corridors! H’ml Decidedly, Hummil ought to go on leave as soon as possible; and, sane or otherwise, he undoubtedly did rowel himself most cruelly. Well. Heaven send us understanding!’

  At midday Hummil rose, with an evil taste in his mouth, but an unclouded eye and a joyful heart.

  ‘I was pretty bad last night, wasn’t I?’ said he.

  ‘I have seen healthier men. You must have had a touch of the sun. Look here: if I write you a swingeing medical certificate, will you apply for leave on the spot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? You want it.’

  ‘Yes, but I can hold on till the weather’s a little cooler.’

  ‘Why should you, if you can get relieved on the spot?’

  ‘Burkett is the only man who could be sent; and he’s a born fool.’

  ‘Oh, never mind about the line. You aren’t so important as all that. Wire for leave, if necessary.’

  Hummil looked very uncomfortable.

  ‘I can hold on till the Rains,’ he said evasively.

  ‘You can’t. Wire to headquarters for Burkett.’

  ‘I won’t. If you want to know why, particularly, Burkett is married, and his wife’s just had a kid, and she’s up at Simla, in the cool, and Burkett has a very nice billet that takes him into Simla from Saturday to Monday. That little woman isn’t at all well. If Burkett was transferred she’d try to follow him. If she left the baby behind she’d fret herself to death. If she came – and Burkett’s one of those selfish little beasts who are always talking about a wife’s place being with her husband – she’d die. It’s murder to bring a woman here just now. Burkett hasn’t the physique of a rat. If he came here he’d go out; and I know she hasn’t any money, and I’m pretty sure she’d go out too. I’m salted in a sort of way, and I’m not married. Wait till the Rains, and then Burkett can get thin down here. It’ll do him heaps of good.’

  ‘Do you mean to say that you intend to face – what you have faced, till the Rains break?’

  ‘Oh, it won’t be so bad, now you’ve shown me a way out of it. I can always wire to you. Besides, now I’ve once got into the way of sleeping, it’ll be all right. Anyhow, I shan’t put in for leave. That’s the long and the short of it.’

  ‘My great Scott! I thought all that sort of thing was dead and done with.’

  ‘Bosh! You’d do the same yourself. I feel a new man, thanks to that cigarette-case. You’re going over to camp now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes; but I’ll try to look you up every other day, if I can.’

  ,. ‘I’m not bad enough for that. I don’t want you to bother. Give the coolies gin and ketchup.’

  ‘Then you feel all right?’

  ‘Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand out in the sun talking to you. Go along, old man, and bless you!’

  Hummil turned on his heel to face the echoing desolation of his bungalow, and the first thing he saw standing in the verandah was the figure of himself. He had met a similar apparition once before, when he was suffering from overwork and the strain of the hot weather.

  ‘This is bad – already,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘If the thing slides away from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is only my eyes and stomach that are out of order. If it walks – my head is going.’

  He approached the figure, which naturally kept at an unvarying distance from him, as is the use of all spectres that are born of overwork. It slid through the house and dissolved into swimming specks within the eyeball as soon as it reached the burning light of the garden. Hummil went about his business till even. When he came in to dinner he found himself sitting at the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily. Except that it cast no shadow it was in all respects real.

  No living man knows what that week held for Hummil. An increase of the epidemic kept Spurstow in camp among the coolies, and all he could do was to telegraph to Mottram, bidding him go to the bungalow and sleep there. But Mottram was forty miles away from the nearest telegraph, and knew nothing of anything save the needs of the Survey till he met, early on Sunday morning, Lowndes and Spurstow heading towards Hummil’s for the weekly gathering.

  ‘Hope the poor chap’s in a better temper, said the former, swinging himself off his horse at the door. ‘I suppose he isn’t up yet.’

  ‘I’ll just have a look at him,’ said the doctor. ‘If he’s asleep there’s no need to wake him.’

  And an instant later, by the tone of Spurstow’s voice calling upon them to enter, the men knew what had happened. There was no need to wake him.

  The punkah was still being pulled over the bed, but Hummil had departed this life at least three hours.

  The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the side, as Spurstow had seen it lying seven nights previously. In the staring eyes was written terror beyond the expression of any pen.

  Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched the forehead lightly with his lips. ‘Oh, you lucky, lucky devil!’ he whispered.

  But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and withdrew shuddering to the other side of the room.

  ‘Poor chap! poor old chap! And the last time I met him I was angry. Spurstow, we should have watched him. Has he – ?’

  Deftly Spurstow continued his investigations, ending by a search round the room.

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ he snapped. ‘There’s no trace of anything. Call the servants.’

  They came, eight or ten of them, whispering and peering over each other’s shoulders.

  ‘When did your sahib go to bed?’ said Spurstow.

  ‘At eleven or ten, we think,’ said Hummil’s personal servant.

  ‘He was well then? But how should you know?’

  ‘He was not ill, as far as our comprehension extended. But he had slept very little for three nights. This I know, because I saw him walking much, and specially in the heart of the night.’

  As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a big straight-necked hunting-spur tumbled on the ground. The doctor groaned. The personal servant peeped at the body.

  ‘What do you think, Chuma?’ said Spurstow, catching the look on the dark face.

  ‘Heaven-born, in my poor opinion, this that was my master has descended into the Dark Places, and there has been caught because he was not able to escape with sufficient speed. We have the spur for evidence that he fought with Fear. Thus have I seen men of my race do with thor
ns when a spell was laid upon them to overtake them in their sleeping hours and they dared not sleep.’

  ‘Chuma, you’re a mud-head. Go out and prepare seals to be set on the sahib’s property.’

  ‘God has made the Heaven-born. God has made me. Who are we, to inquire into the dispensations of God? I will bid the other servants hold aloof while you are reckoning the tale of the sahib’s property. They are all thieves, and would steal.’

  ‘As far as I can make out, he died from – oh, anything; stoppage of the heart’s action, heat-apoplexy, or some other visitation,’ said Spurstow to his companions. ‘We must make an inventory of his effects, and so on.’

  ‘He was scared to death,’ insisted Lowndes. ‘Look at those eyes! For pity’s sake don’t let him be buried with them open!’

  ‘Whatever it was, he’s clear of all the trouble now,’ said Mottram softly.

  Spurstow was peering into the open eyes.

  ‘Come here,’ said he. ‘Can you see anything there?’

  ‘I can’t face it!’ whimpered Lowndes. ‘Cover up the face! Is there any fear on earth that can turn a man into that likeness? It’s ghastly. Oh, Spurstow, cover it up!’

  ‘No fear – on earth,’ said Spurstow. Mottram leaned over his shoulder and looked intently.

  ‘I see nothing except some grey blurs in the pupil. There can be nothing there, you know.’

  ‘Even so. Well, let’s think. It’ll take half a day to knock up any sort of coffin; and he must have died at midnight. Lowndes, old man, go out and tell the coolies to break ground next to Jevins’s grave. Mottram, go round the house with Chuma and see that the seals are put on things. Send a couple of men to me here, and I’ll arrange.’

  The strong-armed servants when they returned to their own kind told a strange story of the doctor sahib vainly trying to call their master back to life by magic arts – to wit, the holding of a little green box that clicked to each of the dead man’s eyes, and of a bewildered muttering on the part of the doctor sahib, who took the little green box away with him.

  The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and there is no protest against the indignity of hasty disposal.