The Phantom Rickshaw - Part II

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 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 foreknowledge 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
lao_."

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 hotheaded 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 on 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 back 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 expressionless 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 of 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.

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 even
now upon me.