Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,
A spectre at my door,
Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail--
I shall but love you more,
Who, from Death's house returning, give me still
One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
--_Shadow Houses_.
This tale may be explained by those who know how souls are made, and where
the bounds of the Possible are put down. I have lived long enough in this
India to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only write the
story as it happened.
Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse,"
because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good Doctor and
never quarreled with any one, not even with our Deputy Commissioner who
had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. He married a girl as
round and as sleepy-looking as himself. She was a Miss Hillardyce,
daughter of "Squash" Hillardyce of the Berars, who married his Chief's
daughter by mistake. But that is another story.
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A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long; but there is nothing
to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years. India is a
delightful country for married folk who are wrapped up in one another.
They can live absolutely alone and without interruption--just as the
Dormice did. Those two little people retired from the world after their
marriage, and were very happy. They were forced, of course, to give
occasional dinners, but they made no friends thereby, and the Station went
its own way and forgot them; only saying, occasionally, that Dormouse was
the best of good fellows though dull. A Civil Surgeon who never quarrels
is a rarity, appreciated as such.
Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere--least of all in
India, where we are few in the land and very much dependent on each
other's kind offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the world
for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid
broke out in the Station in the heart of the cold weather, and his wife
went down. He was a shy little man, and five days were wasted before he
realized that Mrs. Dumoise was burning with something worse than simple
fever, and three days more passed before he ventured to call on Mrs.
Shute, the Engineer's wife, and timidly speak about his trouble.
Nearly every household in India knows that Doctors are very helpless in
typhoid. The battle must be fought out between Death and the Nurses minute
by minute and degree by degree. Mrs. Shute almost boxed Dumoise's ears for
what she called his "criminal delay," and went off at once to look after
the poor girl. We had seven cases of typhoid in the Station that winter
and, as the average of death is about one in every five cases, we felt
certain that we should have to lose somebody. But all did their best. The
women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned to and tended the
bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for
fifty-six days, and brought them through the Valley of the Shadow in
triumph. But, just when we thought all was over, and were going to give a
dance to celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died
in a week and the Station went to the funeral. Dumoise broke down utterly
at the brink of the grave, and had to be taken away.
After the death, Dumoise crept into his own house and refused to be
comforted. He did his duties perfectly, but we all felt that he should go
on leave, and the other men of his own Service told him so. Dumoise was
very thankful for the suggestion--he was thankful for anything in those
days--and went to Chini on a walking-tour. Chini is some twenty marches
from Simla, in the heart of the Hills, and the scenery is good if you are
in trouble. You pass through big, still deodar-forests, and under big,
still cliffs, and over big, still grass-downs swelling like a woman's
breasts; and the wind across the grass, and the rain among the deodars
says--"Hush--hush--hush." So little Dumoise was packed off to Chini, to
wear down his grief with a full-plate camera and a rifle. He took also a
useless bearer, because the man had been his wife's favorite servant. He
was idle and a thief, but Dumoise trusted everything to him.
On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned aside to Bagi, through the
Forest Reserve which is on the spur of Mount Huttoo. Some men who have
traveled more than a little say that the march from Kotegarh to Bagi is
one of the finest in creation. It runs through dark wet forest, and ends
suddenly in bleak, nipped hillside and black rocks. Bagi dâk-bungalow is
open to all the winds and is bitterly cold. Few people go to Bagi. Perhaps
that was the reason why Dumoise went there. He halted at seven in the
evening, and his bearer went down the hillside to the village to engage
coolies for the next day's march. The sun had set, and the night-winds
were beginning to croon among the rocks. Dumoise leaned on the railing of
the veranda, waiting for his bearer to return. The man came back almost
immediately after he had disappeared, and at such a rate that Dumoise
fancied he must have crossed a bear. He was running as hard as he could up
the face of the hill.
But there was no bear to account for his terror. He raced to the veranda
and fell down, the blood spurting from his nose and his face iron-grey.
Then he gurgled--"I have seen the _Memsahib_! I have seen the _Memsahib_!"
"Where?" said Dumoise.
"Down there, walking on the road to the village. She was in a blue dress,
and she lifted the veil of her bonnet and said--'Ram Dass, give my
_salaams_ to the _Sahib_, and tell him that I shall meet him next month at
Nuddea.' Then I ran away, because I was afraid."
What Dumoise said or did I do not know. Ram Dass declares that he said
nothing, but walked up and down the veranda all the cold night, waiting
for the _Memsahib_ to come up the hill and stretching out his arms into
the dark like a madman. But no _Memsahib_ came, and, next day, he went on
to Simla cross-questioning the bearer every hour.
Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. Dumoise and that she had
lifted up her veil and given him the message which he had faithfully
repeated to Dumoise. To this statement Ram Dass adhered. He did not know
where Nuddea was, had no friends at Nuddea, and would most certainly never
go to Nuddea; even though his pay were doubled,
Nuddea is in Bengal and has nothing whatever to do with a Doctor serving
in the Punjab. It must be more than twelve hundred miles south of Meridki.
Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and returned to Meridki, there
to take over charge from the man who had been officiating for him during
his tour. There were some Dispensary accounts to be explained, and some
recent orders of the Surgeon-General to be noted, and, altogether, the
taking-over was a full day's work, In the evening, Dumoise told his _locum
tenens_, who was an old friend of his bachelor days, what had happened at
Bagi; and the man said that Ram Dass might as well have chosen Tuticorin
while he was about it.
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.