Eight decades passed away slowly in the Avondale Phalanstery; and day
after day seemed more and more terrible to poor, weak, disconsolate
Olive. The quiet refinement and delicate surroundings of their placid
life seemed to make her poignant misery and long anxious term of waiting
only the more intense in its sorrow and its awesomeness. Every day, the
younger sisters turned as of old to their allotted round of pleasant
housework; every day the elder sisters, who had earned their leisure,
brought in their dainty embroidery, or their drawing materials, or their
other occupations, and tried to console her, or rather to condole with
her, in her great sorrow. She couldn't complain of any unkindness; on
the contrary, all the brothers and sisters were sympathy itself; while
Clarence, though he tried hard not to be _too_ idolatrous to her (which
is wrong and antisocial, of course), was still overflowing with
tenderness and consideration for her in their common grief. But all that
seemed merely to make things worse. If only somebody would have been
cruel to her; if only the hierarch would have scolded her, or the elder
sisters have shown any distant coldness, or the other girls have been
wanting in sisterly sympathy, she might have got angry or brooded over
her wrongs; whereas, now, she could do nothing save cry passively with a
vain attempt at resignation. It was nobody's fault; there was nobody to
be angry with, there was nothing to blame except the great impersonal
laws and circumstances of the Cosmos, which it would be rank impiety and
wickedness to question or to gainsay. So she endured in silence, loving
only to sit with Clarence's hand in hers, and the dear doomed baby lying
peacefully upon the stole in her lap. It was inevitable and there was no
use repining; for so profoundly had the phalanstery schooled the minds
and natures of those two unhappy young parents (and all their compeers),
that, grieve as they might, they never for one moment dreamt of
attempting to relax or set aside the fundamental principles of
phalansteric society in these matters.
By the kindly rule of the phalanstery, every mother had complete freedom
from household duties for two years after the birth of her child; and
Clarence, though he would not willingly have given up his own particular
work in the grounds and garden, spent all the time he could spare from
his short daily task (every one worked five hours every lawful day, and
few worked longer, save on special emergencies) by Olive's side. At
last, the eight decades passed slowly away, and the fatal day for the
removal of little Rosebud arrived. Olive called her Rosebud because, she
said, she was a sweet bud that could never be opened into a full-blown
rose. All the community felt the solemnity of the painful occasion; and
by common consent the day (Darwin, December 20) was held as an
intra-phalansteric fast by the whole body of brothers and sisters.
On that terrible morning Olive rose early, and dressed herself carefully
in a long white stole with a broad black border of Greek key pattern.
But she had not the heart to put any black upon dear little Rosebud; and
so she put on her fine flannel wrapper, and decorated it instead with
the pretty coloured things that Veronica and Philomela had worked for
her, to make her baby as beautiful as possible on this its last day in a
world of happiness. The other girls helped her and tried to sustain her,
crying all together at the sad event. "She's a sweet little thing," they
said to one another as they held her up to see how she looked. "If only
it could have been her reception to-day instead of her removal!" But
Olive moved through them all with stoical resignation--dry-eyed and
parched in the throat, yet saying not a word save for necessary
instructions and directions to the nursing sisters. The iron of her
creed had entered into her very soul.
After breakfast, brother Eustace and the hierarch came sadly in their
official robes into the lesser infirmary. Olive was there already, pale
and trembling, with little Rosebud sleeping peacefully in the hollow of
her lap. What a picture she looked, the wee dear thing, with the
hothouse flowers from the conservatory that Clarence had brought to
adorn her, fastened neatly on to her fine flannel robe! The physiologist
took out a little phial from his pocket, and began to open a sort of
inhaler of white muslin. At the same moment, the grave, kind old
hierarch stretched out his hands to take the sleeping baby from its
mother's arms. Olive shrank back in terror, and clasped the child softly
to her heart. "No, no, let me hold her myself, dear hierarch," she said,
without flinching. "Grant me this one last favour. Let me hold her
myself." It was contrary to all fixed rules; but neither the hierarch
nor any one else there present had the heart to refuse that beseeching
voice on so supreme and spirit-rending an occasion.
Brother Eustace poured the chloroform solemnly and quietly on to the
muslin inhaler. "By resolution of the phalanstery," he said, in a voice
husky with emotion, "I release you, Rosebud, from a life for which you
are naturally unfitted. In pity for your hard fate, we save you from the
misfortune you have never known, and will never now experience." As he
spoke, he held the inhaler to the baby's face, and watched its breathing
grow fainter and fainter, till at last, after a few minutes, it faded
gradually and entirely away. The little one had slept from life into
death, painlessly and happily, even as they looked.
Clarence, tearful but silent, felt the baby's pulse for a moment, and
then, with a burst of tears, shook his head bitterly. "It is all over,"
he cried with a loud cry. "It is all over; and we hope and trust it is
better so."
But Olive still said nothing.
The physiologist turned to her with an anxious gaze. Her eyes were open,
but they looked blank and staring into vacant space. He took her hand,
and it felt limp and powerless. "Great heaven," he cried, in evident
alarm, "what is this? Olive, Olive, our dear Olive, why don't you
speak?"
Clarence sprang up from the ground, where he had knelt to try the dead
baby's pulse, and took her unresisting wrist anxiously in his. "Oh,
brother Eustace," he cried passionately, "help us, save us; what's the
matter with Olive? she's fainting, she's fainting! I can't feel her
heart beat, no, not ever so little."
Brother Eustace let the pale white hand drop listlessly from his grasp
upon the pale white stole beneath, and answered slowly and distinctly:
"She isn't fainting, Clarence; not fainting, my dear brother. The shock
and the fumes of chloroform together have been too much for the action
of the heart. She's dead too, Clarence; our dear, dear sister; she's
dead too."
Clarence flung his arms wildly round Olive's neck, and listened eagerly
with his ear against her bosom to hear her heart beat. But no sound came
from the folds of the simple black-bordered stole; no sound from
anywhere save the suppressed sobs of the frightened women who huddled
closely together in the corner, and gazed horror-stricken upon the two
warm fresh corpses.
"She was a brave girl," brother Eustace said at last, wiping his eyes
and composing her hands reverently. "Olive was a brave girl, and she
died doing her duty, without one murmur against the sad necessity that
fate had unhappily placed upon her. No sister on earth could wish to die
more nobly than by thus sacrificing her own life and her own weak human
affections on the altar of humanity for the sake of her child and of
the world at large."
"And yet, I sometimes almost fancy," the hierarch murmured with a
violent effort to control his emotions, "when I see a scene like this,
that even the unenlightened practices of the old era may not have been
quite so bad as we usually think them, for all that. Surely an end such
as Olive's is a sad and a terrible end to have forced upon us as the
final outcome and natural close of all our modern phalansteric
civilization."
"The ways of the Cosmos are wonderful," said brother Eustace solemnly;
"and we, who are no more than atoms and mites upon the surface of its
meanest satellite, cannot hope so to order all things after our own
fashion that all its minutest turns and chances may approve themselves
to us as light in our own eyes."
The sisters all made instinctively the reverential genuflexion. "The
Cosmos is infinite," they said together, in the fixed formula of their
cherished religion. "The Cosmos is infinite, and man is but a parasite
upon the face of the least among its satellite members. May we so act as
to further all that is best within us, and to fulfil our own small place
in the system of the Cosmos with all becoming reverence and humility! In
the name of universal Humanity. So be it."
_OUR SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATIONS ON A GHOST._
"Then nothing would convince you of the existence of ghosts, Harry," I
said, "except seeing one."
"Not even seeing one, my dear Jim," said Harry. "Nothing on earth would
make me believe in them, unless I were turned into a ghost myself."
So saying, Harry drained his glass of whisky toddy, shook out the last
ashes from his pipe, and went off upstairs to bed. I sat for a while
over the remnants of my cigar, and ruminated upon the subject of our
conversation. For my own part, I was as little inclined to believe in
ghosts as anybody; but Harry seemed to go one degree beyond me in
scepticism. His argument amounted in brief to this,--that a ghost was by
definition the spirit of a dead man in a visible form here on earth; but
however strange might be the apparition which a ghost-seer thought he
had observed, there was no evidence possible or actual to connect such
apparition with any dead person whatsoever. It might resemble the
deceased in face and figure, but so, said Harry, does a portrait. It
might resemble him in voice and manner, but so does an actor or a mimic.
It might resemble him in every possible particular, but even then we
should only be justified in saying that it formed a close counterpart of
the person in question, not that it was his ghost or spirit. In short,
Harry maintained, with considerable show of reason, that nobody could
ever have any scientific ground for identifying any external object,
whether shadowy or material, with a past human existence of any sort.
According to him, a man might conceivably see a phantom, but could not
possibly know that he saw a ghost.
Harry and I were two Oxford bachelors, studying at the time for our
degree in Medicine, and with an ardent love for the scientific side of
our future profession. Indeed, we took a greater interest in comparative
physiology and anatomy than in physic proper; and at this particular
moment we were stopping in a very comfortable farm-house on the coast of
Flintshire for our long vacation, with the special object of observing
histologically a peculiar sea-side organism, the Thingumbobbum
Whatumaycallianum, which is found so plentifully on the shores of North
Wales, and which has been identified by Professor Haeckel with the larva
of that famous marine ascidian from whom the Professor himself and the
remainder of humanity generally are supposed to be undoubtedly
descended. We had brought with us a full complement of lancets and
scalpels, chemicals and test-tubes, galvanic batteries and
thermo-electric piles; and we were splendidly equipped for a
thorough-going scientific campaign of the first water. The farm-house in
which we lodged had formerly belonged to the county family of the
Egertons; and though an Elizabethan manor replaced the ancient defensive
building which had been wisely dismantled by Henry VIII., the modern
farm-house into which it had finally degenerated still bore the name of
Egerton Castle. The whole house had a reputation in the neighbourhood
for being haunted by the ghost of one Algernon Egerton, who was beheaded
under James II. for his participation, or rather his intention to
participate, in Monmouth's rebellion. A wretched portrait of the hapless
Protestant hero hung upon the wall of our joint sitting-room, having
been left behind when the family moved to their new seat in Cheshire, as
being unworthy of a place in the present baronet's splendid apartments.
It was a few remarks upon the subject of Algernon's ghost which had
introduced the question of ghosts in general; and after Harry had left
the room, I sat for a while slowly finishing my cigar, and contemplating
the battered features of the deceased gentleman.
As I did so, I was somewhat startled to hear a voice at my side observe
in a bland and graceful tone, not unmixed with aristocratic hauteur,
"You have been speaking of me, I believe,--in fact, I have unavoidably
overheard your conversation,--and I have decided to assume the visible
form and make a few remarks upon what seems to me a very hasty decision
on your friend's part."
I turned round at once, and saw, in the easy-chair which Harry had just
vacated, a shadowy shape, which grew clearer and clearer the longer I
looked at it. It was that of a man of forty, fashionably dressed in the
costume of the year 1685 or thereabouts, and bearing a close resemblance
to the faded portrait on the wall just opposite. But the striking point
about the object was this, that it evidently did not consist of any
ordinary material substance, as its outline seemed vague and wavy, like
that of a photograph where the sitter has moved; while all the objects
behind it, such as the back of the chair and the clock in the corner,
showed through the filmy head and body, in the very manner which
painters have always adopted in representing a ghost. I saw at once that
whatever else the object before might be, it certainly formed a fine
specimen of the orthodox and old-fashioned apparition. In dress,
appearance, and every other particular, it distinctly answered to what
the unscientific mind would unhesitatingly have called the ghost of
Algernon Egerton.
Here was a piece of extraordinary luck! In a house with two trained
observers, supplied with every instrument of modern experimental
research, we had lighted upon an undoubted specimen of the common
spectre, which had so long eluded the scientific grasp. I was beside
myself with delight. "Really, sir," I said, cheerfully, "it is most kind
of you to pay us this visit, and I'm sure my friend will be only too
happy to hear your remarks. Of course you will permit me to call him?"
The apparition appeared somewhat surprised at the philosophic manner in
which I received his advances; for ghosts are accustomed to find people
faint away or scream with terror at their first appearance; but for my
own part I regarded him merely in the light of a very interesting
phenomenon, which required immediate observation by two independent
witnesses. However, he smothered his chagrin--for I believe he was
really disappointed at my cool deportment--and answered that he would be
very glad to see my friend if I wished it, though he had specially
intended this visit for myself alone.
I ran upstairs hastily and found Harry in his dressing-gown, on the
point of removing his nether garments. "Harry," I cried breathlessly,
"you must come downstairs at once. Algernon Egerton's ghost wants to
speak to you."
Harry held up the candle and looked in my face with great deliberation.
"Jim, my boy," he said quietly, "you've been having too much whisky."
"Not a bit of it," I answered, angrily. "Come downstairs and see. I
swear to you positively that a Thing, the very counterpart of Algernon
Egerton's picture, is sitting in your easy-chair downstairs, anxious to
convert you to a belief in ghosts."
It took about three minutes to induce Harry to leave his room; but at
last, merely to satisfy himself that I was demented, he gave way and
accompanied me into the sitting-room. I was half afraid that the spectre
would have taken umbrage at my long delay, and gone off in a huff and a
blue flame; but when we reached the room, there he was, _in propria
persona_, gazing at his own portrait--or should I rather say his
counterpart?--on the wall, with the utmost composure.
"Well, Harry," I said, "what do you call that?"
Harry put up his eyeglass, peered suspiciously at the phantom, and
answered in a mollified tone, "It certainly is a most interesting
phenomenon. It looks like a case of fluorescence; but you say the object
can talk?"
"Decidedly," I answered, "it can talk as well as you or me. Allow me to
introduce you to one another, gentlemen:--Mr. Henry Stevens, Mr.
Algernon Egerton; for though you didn't mention your name, Mr. Egerton,
I presume from what you said that I am right in my conjecture."
"Quite right," replied the phantom, rising as it spoke, and making a low
bow to Harry from the waist upward. "I suppose your friend is one of the
Lincolnshire Stevenses, sir?"
"Upon my soul," said Harry, "I haven't the faintest conception where my
family came from. My grandfather, who made what little money we have
got, was a cotton-spinner at Rochdale, but he might have come from
heaven knows where. I only know he was a very honest old gentleman, and
he remembered me handsomely in his will."
"Indeed, sir," said the apparition coldly. "_My_ family were the
Egertons of Egerton Castle, in the county of Flint, Armigeri; whose
ancestor, Radulphus de Egerton, is mentioned in Domesday as one of the
esquires of Hugh Lupus, Earl Palatine of Chester. Radulphus de Egerton
had a son----"
"Whose history," said Harry, anxious to cut short these genealogical
details, "I have read in the Annals of Flintshire, which lies in the
next room, with the name you give as yours on the fly-leaf. But it
seems, sir, you are anxious to converse with me on the subject of
ghosts. As that question interests us all at present, much more than
family descent, will you kindly begin by telling us whether you yourself
lay claim to be a ghost?"
"Undoubtedly I do," replied the phantom.
"The ghost of Algernon Egerton, formerly of Egerton Castle?" I
interposed.
"Formerly and now," said the phantom, in correction. "I have long
inhabited, and I still habitually inhabit, by night at least, the room
in which we are at present seated."
"The deuce you do," said Harry warmly. "This is a most illegal and
unconstitutional proceeding. The house belongs to our landlord, Mr. Hay:
and my friend here and myself have hired it for the summer, sharing the
expenses, and claiming the sole title to the use of the rooms." (Harry
omitted to mention that he took the best bedroom himself and put me off
with a shabby little closet, while we divided the rent on equal terms.)
"True," said the spectre good-humouredly; "but you can't eject a ghost,
you know. You may get a writ of _habeas corpus_, but the English law
doesn't supply you with a writ of _habeas animam_. The infamous Jeffreys
left me that at least. I am sure the enlightened nineteenth century
wouldn't seek to deprive me of it."
"Well," said Harry, relenting, "provided you don't interfere with the
experiments, or make away with the tea and sugar, I'm sure I have no
objection. But if you are anxious to prove to us the existence of
ghosts, perhaps you will kindly allow us to make a few simple
observations?"
"With all the pleasure in death," answered the apparition courteously.
"Such, in fact, is the very object for which I've assumed visibility."
"In that case, Harry," I said, "the correct thing will be to get out
some paper, and draw up a running report which we may both attest
afterwards. A few simple notes on the chemical and physical properties
of a spectre will be an interesting novelty for the Royal Society, and
they ought all to be jotted down in black and white at once."
This course having been unanimously determined upon as strictly regular,
I laid a large folio of foolscap on the writing-table, and the
apparition proceeded to put itself in an attitude for careful
inspection.
"The first point to decide," said I, "is obviously the physical
properties of our visitor. Mr. Egerton, will you kindly allow us to feel
your hand?"
"You may _try_ to feel it if you like," said the phantom quietly, "but I
doubt if you will succeed to any brilliant extent." As he spoke, he held
out his arm. Harry and I endeavoured successively to grasp it: our
fingers slipped through the faintly luminous object as though it were
air or shadow. The phantom bowed forward his head; we attempted to touch
it, but our hands once more passed unopposed across the whole face and
shoulders, without finding any trace whatsoever of mechanical
resistance. "Experience the first," said Harry; "the apparition has no
tangible material substratum." I seized the pen and jotted down the
words as he spoke them. This was really turning out a very full-blown
specimen of the ordinary ghost!
"The next question to settle," I said, "is that of gravity.--Harry, give
me a hand out here with the weighing-machine.--Mr. Egerton, will you be
good enough to step upon this board?"
_Mirabile dictu!_ The board remained steady as ever. Not a tremor of the
steelyard betrayed the weight of its shadowy occupant. "Experience the
second," cried Harry, in his cool, scientific way: "the apparition has
the specific gravity of atmospheric air." I jotted down this note also,
and quietly prepared for the next observation.
"Wouldn't it be well," I inquired of Harry, "to try the weight in vacuo?
It is possible that, while the specific gravity in air is equal to that
of the atmosphere, the specific gravity in vacuo may be zero. The
apparition--pray excuse me, Mr. Egerton, if the terms in which I allude
to you seem disrespectful, but to call you a ghost would be to prejudge
the point at issue--the apparition may have no proper weight of its own
at all."
"It would be very inconvenient, though," said Harry, "to put the whole
apparition under a bell-glass: in fact, we have none big enough.
Besides, suppose we were to find that by exhausting the air we got rid
of the object altogether, as is very possible, that would awkwardly
interfere with the future prosecution of our researches into its nature
and properties."
"Permit me to make a suggestion," interposed the phantom, "if a person
whom you choose to relegate to the neuter gender may be allowed to have
a voice in so scientific a question. My friend, the ingenious Mr. Boyle,
has lately explained to me the construction of his air-pump, which we
saw at one of the Friday evenings at the Royal Institution. It seems to
me that your object would be attained if I were to put one hand only on
the scale under the bell-glass, and permit the air to be exhausted."
"Capital," said Harry: and we got the air-pump in readiness accordingly.
The spectre then put his right hand into the scale, and we plumped the
bell-glass on top of it. The connecting portion of the arm shone through
the severing glass, exactly as though the spectre consisted merely of an
immaterial light. In a few minutes the air was exhausted, and the scales
remained evenly balanced as before.
"This experiment," said Harry judicially, "slightly modifies the opinion
which we formed from the preceding one. The specific gravity evidently
amounts in itself to nothing, being as air in air, and as vacuum in
vacuo. Jot down the result, Jim, will you?"
I did so faithfully, and then turning to the spectre I observed, "You
mentioned a Mr. Boyle, sir, just now. You allude, I suppose, to the
father of chemistry?"
"And uncle of the Earl of Cork," replied the apparition, promptly
filling up the well-known quotation. "Exactly so. I knew Mr. Boyle
slightly during our lifetime, and I have known him intimately ever since
he joined the majority."
"May I ask, while my friend makes the necessary preparations for the
spectrum analysis and the chemical investigation, whether you are in the
habit of associating much with--er--well, with other ghosts?"
"Oh yes, I see a good deal of society."
"Contemporaries of your own, or persons of earlier and later dates?"
"Dates really matter very little to us. We may have Socrates and Bacon
chatting in the same group. For my own part, I prefer modern society--I
may say, the society of the latest arrivals."
"That's exactly why I asked," said I. "The excessively modern tone of
your language and idioms struck me, so to speak, as a sort of
anachronism with your Restoration costume--an anachronism which I fancy
I have noticed in many printed accounts of gentlemen from your portion
of the universe."
"Your observation is quite true," replied the apparition. "We continue
always to wear the clothes which were in fashion at the time of our
decease; but we pick up from new-comers the latest additions to the
English language, and even, I may say, to the slang dictionary. I know
many ghosts who talk familiarly of 'awfully jolly hops,' and allude to
their progenitors as 'the governor.' Indeed, it is considered quite
behind the times to describe a lady as 'vastly pretty,' and poor Mr.
Pepys, who still preserves the antiquated idiom of his diary, is looked
upon among us as a dreadfully slow old fogey."
"But why, then," said I, "do you wear your old costumes for ever? Why
not imitate the latest fashions from Poole's and Worth's, as well as the
latest cant phrase from the popular novels?"
"Why, my dear sir," answered the phantom, "we must have _something_ to
mark our original period. Besides, most people to whom we appear know
something about costume, while very few know anything about changes in
idiom,"--that I must say seemed to me, in passing, a powerful argument
indeed--"and so we all preserve the dress which we habitually wore
during our lifetime."
"Then," said Harry irreverently, looking up from his chemicals, "the
society in your part of the country must closely resemble a fancy-dress
ball."
"Without the tinsel and vulgarity, we flatter ourselves," answered the
phantom.
By this time the preparations were complete, and Harry inquired whether
the apparition would object to our putting out the lights in order to
obtain definite results with the spectroscope. Our visitor politely
replied that he was better accustomed to darkness than to the painful
glare of our paraffin candles. "In fact," he added, "only the strong
desire which I felt to convince you of our existence as ghosts could
have induced me to present myself in so bright a room. Light is very
trying to the eyes of spirits, and we generally take our constitutionals
between eleven at night and four in the morning, stopping at home
entirely during the moonlit half of the month."
"Ah, yes," said Harry, extinguishing the candles; "I've read, of course,
that your authorities exactly reverse our own Oxford rules. You are all
gated, I believe, from dawn to sunset, instead of from sunset to dawn,
and have to run away helter-skelter at the first streaks of daylight,
for fear of being too late for admission without a fine of twopence. But
you will allow that your usual habit of showing yourselves only in the
very darkest places and seasons naturally militates somewhat against the
credibility of your existence. If all apparitions would only follow
your sensible example by coming out before two scientific people in a
well-lighted room, they would stand a much better chance of getting
believed: though even in the present case I must allow that I should
have felt far more confidence in your positive reality if you'd
presented yourself in broad daylight, when Jim and I hadn't punished the
whisky quite as fully as we've done this evening."
When the candles were out, our apparition still retained its
fluorescent, luminous appearance, and seemed to burn with a faint bluish
light of its own. We projected a pencil through the spectroscope, and
obtained, for the first time in the history of science, the spectrum of
a spectre. The result was a startling one indeed. We had expected to
find lines indicating the presence of sulphur or phosphorus: instead of
that, we obtained a continuous band of pale luminosity, clearly pointing
to the fact that the apparition had no known terrestial element in its
composition. Though we felt rather surprised at this discovery, we
simply noted it down on our paper, and proceeded to verify it by
chemical analysis.
The phantom obligingly allowed us to fill a small phial with the
luminous matter, which Harry immediately proceeded to test with all the
resources at our disposal. For purposes of comparison I filled a
corresponding phial with air from another part of the room, which I
subjected to precisely similar tests. At the end of half an hour we had
completed our examination--the spectre meanwhile watching us with
mingled curiosity and amusement; and we laid our written quantitative
results side by side. They agreed to a decimal. The table, being
interesting, deserves a place in this memoir. It ran as follows:--
_Chemical Analysis of an Apparition._
Atmospheric air 96.45 per cent.
Aqueous vapour 2.31 "
Carbonic acid 1.08 "
Tobacco smoke 0.16 "
Volatile alcohol A trace
---------
100.00 "
The alcohol Harry plausibly attributed to the presence of glasses which
had contained whisky toddy. The other constituents would have been
normally present in the atmosphere of a room where two fellows had been
smoking uninterruptedly ever since dinner. This important experiment
clearly showed that the apparition had no proper chemical constitution
of its own, but consisted entirely of the same materials as the
surrounding air.
"Only one thing remains to be done now, Jim," said Harry, glancing
significantly at a plain deal table in the corner, with whose uses we
were both familiar; "but then the question arises, does this gentleman
come within the meaning of the Act? I don't feel certain about it in my
own mind, and with the present unsettled state of public opinion on this
subject, our first duty is to obey the law."
"Within the meaning of the Act?" I answered; "decidedly not. The words
of the forty-second section say distinctly 'any _living_ animal.' Now,
Mr. Egerton, according to his own account, is a ghost, and has been dead
for some two hundred years or thereabouts: so that we needn't have the
slightest scruple on _that_ account."
"Quite so," said Harry, in a tone of relief. "Well then, sir," turning
to the apparition, "may I ask you whether you would object to our
vivisecting you?"
"Mortuisecting, you mean, Harry," I interposed parenthetically. "Let us
keep ourselves strictly within the utmost letter of the law."
"Vivisecting? Mortuisecting?" exclaimed the spectre, with some
amusement. "Really, the proposal is so very novel that I hardly know how
to answer it. I don't think you will find it a very practicable
undertaking: but still, if you like, yes, you may try your hands upon
me."
We were both much gratified at this generous readiness to further the
cause of science, for which, to say the truth, we had hardly felt
prepared. No doubt, we were constantly in the habit of maintaining that
vivisection didn't really hurt, and that rabbits or dogs rather enjoyed
the process than otherwise; still, we did not quite expect an apparition
in human form to accede in this gentlemanly manner to a personal request
which after all is rather a startling one. I seized our new friend's
hand with warmth and effusion (though my emotion was somewhat checked by
finding it slip through my fingers immaterially), and observed in a
voice trembling with admiration, "Sir, you display a spirit of
self-sacrifice which does honour to your head and heart. Your total
freedom from prejudice is perfectly refreshing to the anatomical mind.
If all 'subjects' were equally ready to be vivisected--no, I mean
mortuisected--oh,--well,--there," I added (for I began to perceive that
my argument didn't hang together, as "subjects" usually accepted
mortuisection with the utmost resignation), "perhaps it wouldn't make
much difference after all."
Meanwhile Harry had pulled the table into the centre of the room, and
arranged the necessary instruments at one end. The bright steel had a
most charming and scientific appearance, which added greatly to the
general effect. I saw myself already in imagination drawing up an
elaborate report for the Royal Society, and delivering a Croonian
Oration, with diagrams and sections complete, in illustration of the
"Vascular System of a Ghost." But alas, it was not to be. A preliminary
difficulty, slight in itself, yet enormous in its preventive effects,
unhappily defeated our well-made plans.
"Before you lay yourself on the table," said Harry, gracefully
indicating that article of furniture to the spectre with his lancet,
"may I ask you to oblige me by removing your clothes? It is usual in all
these operations to--ahem--in short, to proceed _in puris naturalibus_.
As you have been so very kind in allowing us to operate upon you, of
course you won't object to this minor but indispensable accompaniment."
"Well, really, sir," answered the ghost, "I should have no personal
objection whatsoever; but I'm rather afraid it can't be done. To tell
you the truth, my clothes are an integral part of myself. Indeed, I
consist chiefly of clothes, with only a head and hands protruding at the
principal extremities. You must have noticed that all persons of my sort
about whom you have read or heard were fully clothed in the fashion of
their own day. I fear it would be quite impossible to remove these
clothes. For example, how very absurd it would be to see the shadowy
outline of a ghostly coat hanging up on a peg behind a door. The bare
notion would be sufficient to cast ridicule upon the whole community.
No, gentlemen, much as I should like to gratify you, I fear the thing's
impossible. And, to let the whole secret out, I'm inclined to think, for
my part, that I haven't got any independent body whatsoever."
"But, surely," I interposed, "you must have _some_ internal economy, or
else how can you walk and talk? For example, have you a heart?"
"Most certainly, my dear sir, and I humbly trust it is in the right
place."
"You misunderstand me," I repeated: "I am speaking literally, not
figuratively. Have you a central vascular organ on your left-hand side,
with two auricles and ventricles, a mitral and a tricuspid valve, and
the usual accompaniment of aorta, pulmonary vein, pulmonary artery,
systole and diastole, and so forth?"
"Upon my soul, sir," replied the spectre with an air of bewilderment, "I
have never even heard the names of these various objects to which you
refer, and so I am quite unable to answer your question. But if you mean
to ask whether I have something beating just under my fob (excuse the
antiquated word, but as I wear the thing in question I must necessarily
use the name), why then, most undoubtedly I have."
"Will you oblige me, sir," said Harry, "by showing me your wrist? It is
true I can't _feel_ your pulse, owing to what you must acknowledge as a
very unpleasant tenuity in your component tissues: but perhaps I may
succeed in _seeing_ it."
The apparition held out its arm. Harry instinctively endeavoured to
balance the wrist in his hand, but of course failed in catching it. We
were both amused throughout to observe how difficult it remained, after
several experiences, to realize the fact that this visible object had no
material and tangible background underlying it. Harry put up his
eyeglass and gazed steadily at the phantom arm; not a trace of veins or
arteries could anywhere be seen. "Upon my word," he muttered, "I believe
it's true, and the subject has no internal economy at all. This is
really very interesting."
"As it is quite impossible to undress you," I observed, turning to our
visitor, "may I venture to make a section through your chest, in order,
if practicable, to satisfy myself as to your organs generally?"
"Certainly," replied the good-humoured spectre; "I am quite at your
service."
I took my longest lancet from its case and made a very neat cut, right
across the sternum, so as to pass directly through all the principal
viscera. The effect, I regret to say, was absolutely nugatory. The two
halves of the body reunited instantaneously behind the instrument, just
as a mass of mercury reunites behind a knife. Evidently there was no
chance of getting at the anatomical details, if any existed, underneath
that brocaded waistcoat of phantasmagoric satin. We gave up the attempt
in despair.
"And now," said the shadowy form, with a smile of conscious triumph,
flinging itself easily but noiselessly into a comfortable arm-chair, "I
hope you are convinced that ghosts really do exist. I think I have
pretty fully demonstrated to you my own purely spiritual and immaterial
nature."
"Excuse me," said Harry, seating himself in his turn on the ottoman: "I
regret to say that I remain as sceptical as at the beginning. You have
merely convinced me that a certain visible shape exists apparently
unaccompanied by any tangible properties. With this phenomenon I am
already familiar in the case of phosphorescent gaseous effluvia. You
also seem to utter audible words without the aid of a proper larynx or
other muscular apparatus; but the telephone has taught me that sounds
exactly resembling those of the human voice may be produced by a very
simple membrane. You have afforded us probably the best opportunity ever
given for examining a so-called ghost, and my private conviction at the
end of it is that you are very likely an egregious humbug."
I confess I was rather surprised at this energetic conclusion, for my
own faith had been rapidly expanding under the strange experiences of
that memorable evening. But the visitor himself seemed much hurt and
distressed. "Surely," he said, "you won't doubt my word when I tell you
plainly that I am the authentic ghost of Algernon Egerton. The word of
an Egerton of Egerton Castle was always better than another man's oath,
and it is so still, I hope. Besides, my frank and courteous conduct to
you both to-night, and the readiness with which I have met all your
proposals for scientific examination, certainly entitle me to better
treatment at your hands."
"I must beg ten thousand pardons," Harry replied, "for the plain
language which I am compelled to use. But let us look at the case in a
different point of view. During your occasional visits to the world of
living men, you may sometimes have travelled in a railway carriage in
your invisible form."
"I have taken a trip now and then (by a night train, of course), just to
see what the invention was like."
"Exactly so. Well, now, you must have noticed that a guard insisted from
time to time upon waking up the sleepy passengers for no other purpose
than to look at their tickets. Such a precaution might be resented, say
by an Egerton of Egerton Castle, as an insult to his veracity and his
honesty. But, you see, the guard doesn't know an Egerton from a Muggins:
and the mere word of a passenger to the effect that he belongs to that
distinguished family is in itself of no more value than his personal
assertion that his ticket is perfectly _en regle_."
"I see your analogy, and I must allow its remarkable force."
"Not only so," continued Harry firmly, "but you must remember that in
the case I have put, the guard is dealing with known beings of the
ordinary human type. Now, when a living person introduces himself to me
as Egerton of Egerton Castle, or Sir Roger Tichborne of Alresford, I
accept his statement with a certain amount of doubt, proportionate to
the natural improbability of the circumstances. But when a gentleman of
shadowy appearance and immaterial substance, like yourself, makes a
similar assertion, to the effect that he is Algernon Egerton who died
two hundred years ago, then I am reluctantly compelled to acknowledge,
even at the risk of hurting that gentleman's susceptible feelings, that
I can form no proper opinion whatsoever of his probable veracity. Even
men, whose habits and constitution I familiarly understand, cannot
always be trusted to tell me the truth: and how then can I expect
implicitly to believe a being whose very existence contradicts all my
previous experiences, and whose properties give the lie to all my
scientific conceptions--a being who moves without muscles and speaks
without lungs? Look at the possible alternatives, and then you will see
that I am guilty of no personal rudeness when I respectfully decline to
accept your uncorroborated assertions. You may be Mr. Algernon Egerton,
it is true, and your general style of dress and appearance certainly
bears out that supposition; but then you may equally well be his Satanic
Majesty in person--in which case you can hardly expect me to credit your
character for implicit truthfulness. Or again, you may be a mere
hallucination of my fancy: I may be suddenly gone mad, or I may be
totally drunk,--and now that I look at the bottle, Jim, we must
certainly allow that we have fully appreciated the excellent qualities
of your capital Glenlivet. In short, a number of alternatives exist, any
one of which is quite as probable as the supposition of your being a
genuine ghost; which supposition I must therefore lay aside as a mere
matter for the exercise of a suspended judgment."
I thought Harry had him on the hip, there: and the spectre evidently
thought so too; for he rose at once and said rather stiffly, "I fear,
sir, you are a confirmed sceptic upon this point, and further argument
might only result in one or the other of us losing his temper. Perhaps
it would be better for me to withdraw. I have the honour to wish you
both a very good evening." He spoke once more with the _hauteur_ and
grand mannerism of the old school, besides bowing very low at each of us
separately as he wished us good-night.
"Stop a moment," said Harry rather hastily. "I wouldn't for the world be
guilty of any inhospitality, and least of all to a gentleman, however
indefinite in his outline, who has been so anxious to afford us every
chance of settling an interesting question as you have. Won't you take a
glass of whisky and water before you go, just to show there's no
animosity?"
"I thank you," answered the apparition, in the same chilly tone; "I
cannot accept your kind offer. My visit has already extended to a very
unusual length, and I have no doubt I shall be blamed as it is by more
reticent ghosts for the excessive openness with which I have conversed
upon subjects generally kept back from the living world. Once more,"
with another ceremonious bow, "I have the honour to wish you a pleasant
evening."
As he said these words, the fluorescent light brightened for a second,
and then faded entirely away. A slightly unpleasant odour also
accompanied the departure of our guest. In a moment, spectre and scent
alike disappeared; but careful examination with a delicate test
exhibited a faint reaction which proved the presence of sulphur in small
quantities. The ghost had evidently vanished quite according to
established precedent.
We filled our glasses once more, drained them off meditatively, and
turned into our bedrooms as the clock was striking four.
Next morning, Harry and I drew up a formal account of the whole
circumstance, which we sent to the Royal Society, with a request that
they would publish it in their Transactions. To our great surprise, that
learned body refused the paper, I may say with contumely. We next
applied to the Anthropological Institute, where, strange to tell, we met
with a like inexplicable rebuff. Nothing daunted by our double failure,
we despatched a copy of our analysis to the Chemical Society; but the
only acknowledgment accorded to us was a letter from the secretary, who
stated that "such a sorry joke was at once impertinent and undignified."
In short, the scientific world utterly refuses to credit our simple and
straightforward narrative; so that we are compelled to throw ourselves
for justice upon the general reading public at large. As the latter
invariably peruse the pages of "BELGRAVIA," I have ventured to appeal to
them in the present article, confident that they will redress our
wrongs, and accept this valuable contribution to a great scientific
question at its proper worth. It may be many years before another chance
occurs for watching an undoubted and interesting Apparition under such
favourable circumstances for careful observation; and all the above
information may be regarded as absolutely correct, down to five places
of decimals.
Still, it must be borne in mind that unless an apparition had been
scientifically observed as we two independent witnesses observed this
one, the grounds for believing in its existence would have been next to
none. And even after the clear evidence which we obtained of its
immaterial nature, we yet remain entirely in the dark as to its
objective reality, and we have not the faintest reason for believing it
to have been a genuine unadulterated ghost. At the best we can only say
that we saw and heard Something, and that this Something differed very
widely from almost any other object we had ever seen and heard before.
To leap at the conclusion that the Something was therefore a ghost,
would be, I venture humbly to submit, without offence to the Psychical
Research Society, a most unscientific and illogical specimen of that
peculiar fallacy known as Begging the Question.
_RAM DAS OF CAWNPORE._
We Germans do not spare trouble where literary or scientific work is on
hand: and so when I was appointed by the University of Breslau to the
travelling scholarship in the Neo-Sanskritic languages, I made up my
mind at once to spend the next five years of my life in India. I knew
already a good deal more Hindi and Urdu than most English officials who
have spent twenty years in the country; but I was anxious to perfect my
knowledge by practice on the spot, and to acquire thorough proficiency
in conversation by intercourse with the people themselves. I therefore
went out to India at once, and avoiding the great towns, such as
Calcutta or Allahabad, which have been largely anglicised by residents
and soldiers, I took up my abode in the little village of Bithoor on the
Ganges, a few miles from Cawnpore, celebrated as having been the
residence of the Nana Sahib, whom you English always describe as "the
most ferocious rebel in the Mutiny." Here I spent four years in daily
intercourse with the native gentry, whose natural repugnance to
foreigners I soon conquered by invariable respect for their feelings and
prejudices. At the end of eighteen months I had so won my way to their
hearts that the Muhammedans regarded me as scarcely outside the pale of
Islam, while the Hindoos usually addressed me by the religious title of
Bhai or brother.
Of course, however, the English officials did not look with any
favouring eye upon my proceedings, especially as I sometimes felt called
upon to remonstrate with them upon their hasty and often ignorant method
of dispensing justice. This coolness towards the authorities increased
the friendship felt towards me by the native population; and "the
European Sahib who is not a Feringhee" became a general adviser of many
among the poorer people in their legal difficulties. I merely mention
these facts to account for the confidence reposed in me, of which the
story I am about to relate is a striking example.
I had a syce or groom who passed by the name of Lal Biro. This man was a
tall, reserved, white-haired old Hindoo, a Jat by caste, but with a
figure which might have been taken for that of a Brahman. His manner to
me was always cold and sometimes sullen; and I found it difficult to
place myself on the same terms with him as with my other servants. One
dark evening, however, during the cold season, I had driven back from
Cawnpore with him late at night in a small open trap, and found him far
more chatty and communicative than usual. When we reached the bungalow,
we discovered that the lights were out, and the house almost shut up, as
the servants had fancied that I meant to sleep at the club. Lal Biro
accordingly came in with me, and helped me to get my supper ready. Then
at my request he sat down cross-legged near the door and continued to
give me some reminiscences of the Mutiny which had been interrupted by
our arrival.
"Yes, Sahib," he said quietly, composing himself on a little mat with a
respectful inclination of the body; "I am Ram Das of Cawnpore."
I was startled by the confession, for I knew the name of Ram Das as one
of the most dangerous petty rebels, on whose head Government had fixed a
large price; but I was gratified by the confidence he reposed in me,
and I begged him to go on with his story. I write it down now in very
nearly the literal English equivalent of his exact words.
"Yes, Sahib, it is a long story truly. I will tell you how it all came
about. I was a cultivator on the uplands there by Cawnpore, and I had a
nice plot of land in Zameendari near the village there, good land with
wheat and millet and a little tobacco. My millet was joar, and I got a
rupee for eighteen seers, good money. I was well-to-do in those days. No
man in the village but spoke well of Ram Das. I had a wife and three
children, and a good mud cottage, and I paid my dues regularly to
Mahadeo, oil and grain, most properly. The Brahmans said I was a most
pious man, and everybody thought well of me.
"One day Shaikh Ali, a Muhammedan, a landowner from over the river in
Oude, whom I knew in the bazaar at Cawnpore, he met me near the bridge
resting. He said to me, 'Well, Ram Das, these are strange things coming
to pass. They say the sepoys have mutinied at Meerut, and the Feringhees
are to be driven into the sea.'
"I said, 'That would not do us Hindoos much good. We should fall under
you Musalmans again, and you would have an emperor at Delhi, and he
would tax us and trouble us as our fathers tell us the Moguls did before
the Feringhees came.'
"Shaikh Ali said to me, 'Are you a good man and true?'
"I answered, 'I pay my dues regularly and do poojah, but I don't know
what you, a Musalman, mean by a good man.'
"'Can you keep counsel against the accursed Feringhees?' said he.
"'That is an easy thing to do,' I answered. 'They tax us, and number us,
and make our salt dear, and mean to take our daughters away from us, for
which purpose they have made a census, to see how many young women
there are of twelve years and upwards. Besides, they slaughter cows the
same as you do.'
"'Listen to me, Ram Das,' he said, 'and keep your counsel. Do you know
that they have tried to make all the sepoys lose caste and become like
dogs and Pariahs, by putting cow's grease on the cartridges?'
"'I know it,' I replied, 'because my brother is a sepoy at Allahabad,
and he sent me word of it by a son of our neighbour.'
"'Did we Musalmans ever do so?' he asked again.
"'I never heard it,' said I: 'but indeed I am ignorant of all these
things, for I am not an old man, and I have only heard imperfectly from
my elders. Still, I don't know that you ever tried to make us lose
caste.'
"'Well, Ram Das,' said the Shaikh, 'listen to what we propose. The
sepoys from Meerut have gone to Delhi and have proclaimed the King as
Emperor. But now the Nana of Bithoor has something to say about it. If
the Nana were made king, would you fight for him?'
"'Certainly,' said I, 'for he is a Mahratta and a good Hindoo. He should
by rights be Peshwa of the Mahrattas, and hold power even over your
emperor at Delhi.'
"'That is quite true,' the Shaikh answered. 'The Peshwa was always the
right hand and director of the Emperor. If we put the Mogul on the
throne once more, the Nana would be his real sovereign, and Hindoos and
Musalmans alike would rejoice in the change.'
"'But suppose we fall out among ourselves!'
"'What does that matter in the end?' he answered. 'Let us first drive
out the accursed Feringhees, and then, if Allah prosper us, we may
divide the land as we like between the two creeds. We are all sons of
the soil, Hindoo and Musalman alike, and we can live together in peace.
But these hateful Feringhees, they come across the sea, they overrun all
India, they tax us all alike, they treat your Sindiah and Holkar as they
treat our Nizam and our king of Oude, they take away our slaves, they
tax our food, they pollute your sacred rivers, they destroy your castes,
and as for us, they take their women to picnic in our mosques, as I have
seen myself at Agra. Shall we not first drive them into the sea?'
"'You say well,' I answered, 'and I shall ask more of this matter at
Bithoor.'
"That was the first that I heard of it all. Next day, the village was
all in commotion. It was said that the Nana had called on all good
Hindoos to help him to clear out the Feringhees. I left my hut and my
children, and I came to Bithoor here. Then they gave me a rifle, and
told me I should march with them to Cawnpore to kill the Feringhees.
There were not many of the dogs, and the gods were on our side; and when
we had killed them all we should have the whole of India for the
Hindoos, with no land-tax or salt-tax, and there should be no more
cattle slaughtered nor no more interference with the pilgrims at
Hurdwar. It was a grand day that, and the Nana, dressed out in all the
Peshwa's jewels, looked like a very king.
"Well, we went to Cawnpore and began to besiege the entrenchments which
Wheeler Sahib had thrown up round the cantonment. We had great guns and
many men, both sepoys and volunteers. Inside, the Feringhees had only a
few, and not much artillery. We all thought that the gods had given us
the Feringhees to slay, and that there would be no more of them left at
all.
"For twenty days we continued besieging, and the Feringhees got weaker
and weaker. They had no food, and scarcely any water. At last Wheeler
Sahib sent to tell the Nana that he would give himself up, if the Nana
would spare their lives. The Nana was a merciful man, and he said, 'I
might go on and take the entrenchment, and kill you all if I wished; but
to save time, because I want to get away and join the others, I will
let you off.' So he took all the money in the treasury, and the guns,
and promised to provide boats to take them all down to Allahabad.
"I was standing about near one of our guns that day, when Chunder Lal, a
Brahman in the Nana's troops, came up to me and said, 'Well, Ram Das,
what do you think of this?'
"'I think,' said I, 'that it is a sin and a shame, after we have broken
down the hospital, and starved out the Feringhees, to let them go down
the river to Allahabad, to strengthen the garrison that pollutes that
holy city. For I hear that they do all kinds of wrong there, and insult
the Brahmans, and the bathers, and the sacred fig-tree. And if these men
go and join them, the garrison will be stronger, and they will be able
to hold out longer against the people, which may the gods avert!'
"'So I think too, Ram Das,' said he; 'and for my part, I would try to
prevent their going.'
"A little later, we went down to the river, by the Nana's orders. There
some men had got boats together, and were putting the Feringhees into
them. It was getting dark, and we all went down to guard them. A few of
them had got into the boats; the rest were on the bank. I can see it all
now: the white men with their proud looks abashed, going meekly into the
boats, and the women stepping, all afraid and shrinking from the black
faces--shrinking from us as if we were unclean and they would lose caste
by touching us. Though they were so frightened, they were proud still.
Then three guns went off somewhere in the camp. Chunder Lal was near me,
and he said to me, 'That is the signal for us to fire. The Nana ordered
me to fire when I heard those guns.' I don't know if it was true:
perhaps the Nana ordered it, perhaps Chunder Lal told a lie: but I never
could find out the truth about it, for they blew Chunder Lal from the
guns at Cawnpore afterwards, and I have never seen the Nana since to
ask him. At any rate, I levelled my musket and fired. I hit an officer
Sahib, and wounded him, not mortally. In a moment there was a great
report, and I looked round, and saw all our men firing. I don't know if
they had the word of command, but I think not. I think they all saw me
fire, and fired because I did, and because they thought it a shame to
let the Feringhees escape; as though the head man of a village should
entrap a tiger, a man-eater that had killed many cultivators in their
dal-fields, and then should let it go. If a headman ordered the
villagers to loose it from the trap, do you think they would obey him?
No, and if he loosed it himself, they would take muskets and sticks and
weapons of all kinds, and kill the man-eater at once. That is what we
did with the Feringhees.
"It was a terrible sight, and I did not like to see it. Some of them
leapt into the water and were drowned. Others swam away madly, like wild
fowl, and we shot at them as they swam; and then they dived, and when
they came up again, we fired at them again, and the water was red with
their blood. I hit one man on the shoulder, and broke his arm, but still
he swam on with his other arm, till somebody put a bullet through his
head, and he sank. I ran into the water, as did many others, and we
followed them down until all the swimmers were picked off. Some of the
boats crossed the river: but there was a regiment waiting on the Oude
shore--some said by accident, others that the Nana had posted it
there--and the sepoys hacked them all to pieces as they tried to escape.
It was a dreadful sight, and I am an older man now, and do not like to
think of it: but I was younger then, and our blood was hot with
fighting, and we thought we were going to drive the Feringhees out of
the country, and that the gods would be well pleased with our day's
work.
"Some boats got away a little way, but they were afterwards sent back.
The women and children, some of them badly wounded, we took back into
Cawnpore. We put them in the Bibi's house, near the Assembly Rooms. Then
in a few days, the others who were sent back from Futteypore arrived,
and the Nana said, 'What shall I do with them?' Everybody said, 'Shoot
them:' so we took out all the men the same day and shot them at once.
The women and children the Nana spared, because he was a humane man; and
he sent them to the others in the Bibi's house. There they were well
treated; and though they had not punkahs, and tattis, and cow's flesh,
as formerly, yet they got better rations than any of the Nana's own
soldiers: for the Feringhees, like all you Europeans, Sahib, are very
luxurious, and will not live off rice or dal and a little ghee like
other people. You have conquered every place in the world, from Ceylon
to Cashmere, and so you have got luxurious, and live off wheaten bread,
and cow's flesh, and wine, and many such ungodly things. But the rest of
the world think it a great thing if they have ghee to their rice.
"After a fortnight the Nana's troops were defeated at Futteypore, and it
was said that the Feringhee ladies were sending letters to the army.
Then the Nana was very angry. He said, 'I have spared these women's
lives, and yet they are sending news to my enemies. I will tell you what
I will do: I will put them all to death.' So he gave word to have them
shot. I was one of the guards at the Bibi's house, and I got orders to
shoot them. Then we all tried to bring them out in front of the house;
but they would not come; so we had to go in and put an end to them there
with swords and bayonets. Poor things! they shrieked piteously; and I
was sorry for them, because they were some of them young and pretty, and
it is not the women's fault if the Feringhees come here, for the
Feringhee ladies hate India, and will all go away again across the
water if they can get a chance. And then there were the children! One
poor lady clung to my knees and begged hard for her daughter: but I had
to obey orders, so I cut her down. It was very sad. But then, the
Feringhee ladies are even prouder than the men, and they hate us
Hindoos. They would not care if they killed a thousand of us if their
little fingers ached. Look how they make us salaam, and punish us for
small faults, and compel us to work punkahs, and to run on foot after
their carriages, and insult our gods. Ah, they are a cruel, proud race.
They are lower than the lowest Sudra, and yet they will treat a
twice-born Brahman like a dog.
"We threw all the bodies into the well at Cawnpore where now they have
put up an image of one of their gods--a cold, white god, with two
wings--to avenge their death. Then there was great joy in Cawnpore. We
had killed the last of the Feringhees, and India should be our own.
Soon, we might make the Nana into a real Peshwa, and turn against the
Musalmans, and put down all slaughtering of cattle altogether, as the
Rani did at Jhansi. We should have no more land-tax to pay, for the
Musalmans should pay all the taxes, as is just: but the Hindoos should
have their land for nothing, and live upon chupatties and ghee and honey
every day. Ah, that was the grandest day that was ever seen in Cawnpore!
"But that was not the end of it. In the mysterious providence of the
all-wise gods it was otherwise ordained. A few days before all this, I
was standing about in the bazaar, when I met a jemadar. He said to me,
'So the Feringhees are marching from Allahabad!'
"'The Feringhees!' I said: 'why, no, we have killed them all off out of
India, thanks be to the gods. At Delhi they are all killed, and at
Meerut, and at Cawnpore here, and I believe everywhere but at Allahabad
and at Calcutta.'
"'Ram Das,' he answered, 'you are a child; you know nothing. Do you
think the Feringhees are so few? They are swarming across the water like
locusts across the Ganges. In a few months, they will all come from
where they have been helping the Sultan of Roum against the other
Christians, and they will make the whole Doab into a desert, as they
made Rohilcund in the days of Hostein Sahib.[1] Shall I tell you the
news from Delhi?'
"'Yes,' I said, 'tell me by all means, for I don't believe the
Feringhees will ever again hold rule in India, the land of the all-wise
gods.' In those days, Sahib, I was very foolish. I did not know that the
Feringhees were in number like the green parrots, and that they could
send countless shiploads across the water as easily as we could send a
cargo of dal down the river to Benares.
"'Well, then,' he said, 'Delhi has been besieged, and before long it
will be taken. And the Feringhees have sent up men from Calcutta who
have reached Allahabad, and are now on the march for Cawnpore. When they
come, they will take us all, and kill the Nana, and there will be an end
of the Hindoos for ever. They are going to make us all into Christians
by force, baptising us with unclean water, and making Brahmans and
Pariahs eat together of cow's flesh, and destroying all caste, and
modesty, and religion altogether.'
"'They will do all these things, doubtless,' I replied, 'if they can
succeed in catching us: but it is impossible. The Feringhees are but a
handful: they could never have ruled us if it were not for the sepoys.
They had all the muskets and the ammunition, and they kept them from us.
But now that the sepoys have mutinied, the Feringhees are but a few
officers and half-a-dozen regiments. And I cannot believe that the gods
would allow men like them, who are worse than Musalmans, and have no
caste, to conquer us who are the best blood in India, Brahmans, and
Jats, and Mahrattas.'
"But the jemadar laughed at me. 'I tell you,' he said, 'this rebellion
is all child's play. For I have myself been across the water once, as an
officer's servant, and have been to England, and to their great
town, London. It is so great that a man can hardly walk across it from
end to end in a day; and if you were to put Allahabad or Cawnpore down
in its midst, the people would not know that any new thing had come
about. They have ships in their rivers as thick as the canes in a
sugar-field; and iron roads with cars drawn by steam horses. They have
so many men that they could overrun all India as easily as the people of
Cawnpore could overrun Bihtoor. And so when I hear their guns outside
the town, I will run away to them, and I advise you to do so too.'
"I didn't believe him at the time; but a few days afterwards, I found
out that the Feringhees were really marching from Allahabad. And when we
killed the ladies, they were almost at the door. They fought like
demons, and we know that the demons must all be on their side. Many
times we went out to meet them, but in four separate battles they cut
our men to pieces like sheep. At last, just after we had got rid of the
ladies, they got to Cawnpore.
"Then there was no end of the confusion. The Nana got frightened, and
fled away. We blew up the magazine, so that they might not have powder;
and the Feringhees came at once into the town. There never were people
so savage or angry. The sight of the well and the Bibi's house seemed to
drive them wild. They were more like tigers than human beings. Every
sepoy whom they caught they shot at once for vengeance, because that is
their religion: and many who were not sepoys, and who had not borne arms
against them, they shot on false evidence. Every man who had a grudge
against another told the Feringhees that their enemy had helped to cut
down the ladies; and the Feringhees were so greedy for blood that they
believed it all, and shot them down at once. So much blood was never
shed in Cawnpore: for one life they took ten. Then we knew it was all
true what the jemadar had said, and that they would take the whole Doab
back, and put back the land-tax, and the salt-tax; and we thought too
that they would make us all into Christians; but _that_ they have not
done, for so long as they get their taxes, and have high pay and good
bungalows, and cow's flesh and beer, they don't care about, or reverence
any religion, not even their own. For we Hindoos respect our fakeers,
and even the Musalmans respect their pirs; but the Feringhees think as
little of the missionaries as we do ourselves, and care more for dances
than for their churches. That is why they have not compelled us to
become Christians.
"All the time the Feringhees were in Cawnpore, I lay hid in the
jemadar's house. He was a good man, though he had gone over to the
Feringhees as soon as they came in sight: and nobody suspected his
house, because he was now on their side, and had given them news of all
that took place in the town when we killed the officers and the ladies.
So I was quite safe there, and got dal and water every day, and was in
no danger at all.
"Presently, the Feringhees moved off again, abandoning Cawnpore, because
Havelock Sahib, who was the most terrible of their generals, wanted to
go on to Lucknow. There the Musalmans of Oude had risen and were
besieging the Presidency, with all the soldiers and officers. I would
not go to Oude, because I did not care to fight for Musalmans,
preferring rather to wait the chance of the Nana coming back; for only a
Mahratta could now recover the kingdom for the Hindoos; and the
Musalmans are almost as bad as the Feringhees themselves. In a short
time, however, the Gwalior men came. They were good men, the Gwalior
men: for though Sindiah, their rajah, had commanded them not to fight,
they would not desert the other Hindoos, when there were Feringhees to
be killed: and they disobeyed Sindiah, and rebelled, and so I joined
them gladly. They pitched only fifteen miles from Cawnpore, and there I
went out and enlisted with them.
"By-and-by most of the Gwalior men got frightened, and went back again.
Then things became very bad. A few of us marched southward, and hid in
the jungles that slope down towards the Jumna. We were very frightened,
because there are tigers in that jungle: and two Gwalior men were eaten
by the tigers. But soon some Feringhees from Etawa heard of our being
there, and they came out to stalk us. It was just like shooting
_nil-ghae_. They came on horseback, and closed all round the jungle
where we were. Then they crept on into the jungle, and we crept away
from them. Every now and then they drove a man into an open space; and
then they all shouted like fiends, and shot at him. When they hit him
and rolled him over, they laughed, and shouted louder still. I was
hidden under some low bushes; and two Feringhees passed close to me, one
on each side of the bushes; but they did not see me. Soon after, they
started a man who had been a sepoy, and he ran back towards my bushes. I
never said a word. Then they all fired at him, and killed him: but one
bullet hit me on the arm, and went through the flesh of my arm, and
partly splintered the bone. But still I said nothing. All day long I lay
moaning to myself very low, and the Feringhees scoured all the jungle,
and killed everybody but me, and went away saying to themselves that
they had had a good day's sport. For they hunted us just as if we were
antelopes.
"I lay for a fortnight, wounded, in the jungle, and had nothing to eat
but Mahua berries. I was feverish and wandered in my mind: but at the
end of a fortnight I could crawl out, and managed to drag along my
wounded arm. Then I went to the nearest village, and gave out that I was
a cultivator who had been wounded by the Gwalior men in trying to defend
a _tuhseelie_[2] for the Feringhees. For that, they took great care of
me, and sent me on to Cawnpore.
"I was not afraid to go back to the town, for my own people would not
know me again. In that fortnight I had grown from a young man into the
man you see me; only I was older-looking then than I am now, for I have
got younger in the Sahib's service. My hair had turned white, and so had
my beard, which was longer and more matted than before. My forehead was
wrinkled, and my cheeks had fallen away. As soon as I had got to
Cawnpore, I went straight to the jemadar's house, to see if he would
recognize me; but he did not: for even my voice was hoarser and harsher
than of old, through fever and exposure. So I went and told my story to
the Feringhee doctor, how I had been wounded in keeping the tuhseelie
for his people; and he tended my arm, and made it well again. For though
the Feringhees are savage like tigers to their enemies, if you befriend
them, they will treat you well. In that they are better than the
Musalmans.
"Soon after, I went out to the parade ground, because I heard there was
to be a dreadful sight. They were going to blow the rebels they had
taken, from the guns. I went out and looked on. Then they took all the
men, Brahmans and Chumars alike, and broke caste, and tied them each to
a gun. I could not have done it, though I cut down the Feringhee ladies;
but they did it, and made a light matter of it. Then they fired the
guns, and in a whiff their bodies were all blown away utterly, so that
there was nothing left of them. This they did so as utterly to destroy
the rebels, leaving neither body nor soul, but annihilating them
altogether, which is worse than death. They would have done it to me,
if they had caught me. Do you wonder that I hate the Feringhees, Sahib?
Why, they did it even to the twice-born Brahmans, let alone a Jat. The
gods will avenge it on them.
"Then I went out to look at my plot of land. The Feringhees knew of me
from many traitors, some of whom had given up my name to save themselves
from being blown away--and no wonder. They had seized my plot, and sold
it to another man, a zameendar, a Kayath in Cawnpore, who had made money
by supplying them with food--the curse of all the gods upon him! And as
for my wife and children, they had gone wandering out, and I have never
seen them since. My wife was with child, and she went into Cawnpore, and
thence elsewhere, I know not where, and starved to death, I suppose, or
died in some other shameful way. But one of my daughters a missionary
got, and sent her to Meerut to a school; and there they are teaching her
to be a Christian, and to hate her own gods and her own people, and to
love the Feringhees who suck the blood of India, and grind down the poor
with taxes, and dispossess the Thakurs, who ought, of course, by right
to own the land. This much I learned by inquiring at Cawnpore; but how
my wife died, or whether they killed her, or what, that I have never
been able to learn.
"So that was the end of it all. The Nana was hidden away somewhere up
Nepaul way; and the Feringhees had got back Lucknow; and all over the
Doab and the Punjab they were established again, and the hopes of the
people were all broken. And I had lost my land, and my wife, and my
children, and had nothing to live upon or to live for. And we had not
driven out the accursed strangers, after all, but on the contrary they
made themselves stronger than ever, and sent more soldiers, as the
jemadar had prophesied, and put down the Company, who used to be their
rajah, and sent up a Maharani instead, who is now Empress of India. And
they made new taxes and a new census and all sorts of imposts. But since
that time they have been more afraid of us, and are not so insolent to
the temples, or the pilgrims, or to the sacred monkeys. And I came to
Bithoor, and became a syce, and I have been a syce ever since. That is
all I know about the Mutiny, Sahib."
The old man stopped suddenly, having told all his story in a dull,
monotonous voice, with little feeling and no dramatic display. I have
tried to reproduce it just as he said it. There was no passion, no
fierceness, no cruelty in his manner; but simply a deep, settled,
uniform tone of hatred to the English. It was the only time I had ever
heard the story of the Mutiny from a native point of view, and I give it
as I heard it, without mitigating aught either of its horror or its
truth.
"And you are not afraid of telling me all this?" I asked.
He shook his head. "The Sahib has a white face," he answered, "but his
heart is black."
"And the Nana?" I inquired. "Do you know if he is living still?"
His eyes flashed fire for the first time since he had begun. "Ay," he
cried; "he _is_ living. That I know from many trusty friends. And he
will come again whenever there is trouble between the Feringhees and the
other Christians: and then we shall have no quarrelling among ourselves;
but Sindiah, and Holkar, and the Nizam, and the Oude people, and even
the Bengalis will rise up together; and we will cut every Feringhee's
throat in all India, and the gods will give us the land for ever
after.... Good night, Sahib: my salaam to you." And he glided like a
serpent from the room.