‘Or powers of darkness me molest!’
‘Bah! what an old hypocrite you are!’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Lowndes. ‘You are at full liberty to make fun of
anything else you like, but leave that hymn alone. It’s associated in my
mind with the most sacred recollections----’
‘Summer evenings in the country,--stained-glass window,--light going
out, and you and she jamming your heads together over one hymn-book,’
said Mottram.
‘Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting you in the eye when you walked
home. Smell of hay, and a moon as big as a bandbox sitting on the top of
a haycock; bats,--roses,--milk and midges,’ said Lowndes.
‘Also mothers. I can just recollect my mother singing me to sleep with
that when I was a little chap,’ said Spurstow.
The darkness had fallen on the room. They could hear Hummil squirming in
his chair.
‘Consequently,’ said he testily, ‘you sing it when you are seven fathom
deep in Hell! It’s an insult to the intelligence of the Deity to pretend
we’re anything but tortured rebels.’
‘Take TWO pills,’ said Spurstow; ‘that’s tortured liver.’
‘The usually placid Hummil is in a vile bad temper. I’m sorry for his
coolies to-morrow,’ said Lowndes, as the servants brought in the lights
and prepared the table for dinner.
As they were settling into their places about the miserable goat-chops,
and the smoked tapioca pudding, Spurstow took occasion to whisper to
Mottram, ‘Well done, David!’
‘Look after Saul, then,’ was the reply.
‘What are you two whispering about?’ said Hummil suspiciously.
‘Only saying that you are a damned poor host. This fowl can’t be cut,’
returned Spurstow with a sweet smile. ‘Call this a dinner?’
‘I can’t help it. You don’t expect a banquet, do you?’
Throughout that meal Hummil contrived laboriously to insult directly
and pointedly all his guests in succession, and at each insult Spurstow
kicked the aggrieved persons under the table; but he dared not exchange
a glance of intelligence with either of them. Hummil’s face was white
and pinched, while his eyes were unnaturally large. No man dreamed for
a moment of resenting his savage personalities, but as soon as the meal
was over they made haste to get away. ‘Don’t go. You’re just getting
amusing, you fellows. I hope I haven’t said anything that annoyed you.
You’re such touchy devils.’ Then, changing the note into one of almost
abject entreaty, Hummil added, ‘I say, you surely aren’t going?’
‘In the language of the blessed Jorrocks, where I dines I sleeps,’ said
Spurstow. ‘I want to have a look at your coolies to-morrow, if you don’t
mind. You can give me a place to lie down in, I suppose?’
The others pleaded the urgency of their several duties next day, and,
saddling up, departed together, Hummil begging them to come next Sunday.
As they jogged off, Lowndes unbosomed himself to Mottram--
‘... And I never felt so like kicking a man at his own table in my life.
He said I cheated at whist, and reminded me I was in debt! ‘Told you you
were as good as a liar to your face! You aren’t half indignant enough
over it.’
‘Not I,’ said Mottram. ‘Poor devil! Did you ever know old Hummy behave
like that before or within a hundred miles of it?’
‘That’s no excuse. Spurstow was hacking my shin all the time, so I kept
a hand on myself. Else I should have--’
‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d have done as Hummy did about Jevins; judge no
man this weather. By Jove! the buckle of my bridle is hot in my hand!
Trot out a bit, and ‘ware rat-holes.’
Ten minutes’ trotting jerked out of Lowndes one very sage remark when he
pulled up, sweating from every pore--
‘’Good thing Spurstow’s with him to-night.’
‘Ye-es. Good man, Spurstow. Our roads turn here. See you again next
Sunday, if the sun doesn’t bowl me over.’
‘S’pose so, unless old Timbersides’ finance minister manages to dress
some of my food. Good-night, and--God bless you!’
‘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 sleepers’ nose and mouth, and announced that the couches were
ready.
The men flung themselves down, ordering the punkah-coolies 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 civilisation,’ 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’m! 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 mid-day 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 thorns 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 gray 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.
At the last moment Lowndes was seized with scruples of conscience.
‘Ought you to read the service,--from beginning to end?’ said he to
Spurstow.
‘I intend to. You’re my senior as a civilian. You can take it if you
like.’
‘I didn’t mean that for a moment. I only thought if we could get a
chaplain from somewhere,--I’m willing to ride anywhere,--and give poor
Hummil a better chance. That’s all.’
‘Bosh!’ said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to the tremendous words
that stand at the head of the burial service.
After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence to the memory of the dead.
Then Spurstow said absently--
‘’Tisn’t in medical science.’
‘What?’
‘Things in a dead man’s eye.’
‘For goodness’ sake leave that horror alone!’ said Lowndes. ‘I’ve seen
a native die of pure fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what killed
Hummil.’
‘The deuce you do! I’m going to try to see.’ And the doctor retreated
into the bath-room with a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was
the sound of something being hammered to pieces, and he emerged, very
white indeed.
‘Have you got a picture?’ said Mottram. ‘What does the thing look like?’
‘It was impossible, of course. You needn’t look, Mottram. I’ve torn up
the films. There was nothing there. It was impossible.’
‘That,’ said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching the shaking hand
striving to relight the pipe, ‘is a damned lie.’
Mottram laughed uneasily. ‘Spurstow’s right,’ he said. ‘We’re all in
such a state now that we’d believe anything. For pity’s sake let’s try
to be rational.’
There was no further speech for a long time. The hot wind whistled
without, and the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking
brass, burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up panting in the
intense glare. ‘We’d better go on on that,’ said Spurstow. ‘Go back to
work. I’ve written my certificate. We can’t do any more good here, and
work’ll keep our wits together. Come on.’
No one moved. It is not pleasant to face railway journeys at mid-day
in June. Spurstow gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the
doorway, said--
‘There may be Heaven,--there must be Hell. Meantime, there is our life
here. We-ell?’
Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer to the question.