The Phantom Rickshaw Read online

  Then Lowndes, meditatively: ‘I’d give—I’d give three months’ pay to have that gentleman spend one month with me and see how the free and independent native prince works things. Old Timbersides’—this was his flippant title for an honoured and decorated prince—‘has been wearing my life out this week past for money. By Jove! his latest performance was to send me one of his women as a bribe!’

  ‘Good for you. Did you accept it?’ said Mottram.

  ‘No. I rather wish I had. Now. She was a pretty little person, and she yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king’s women-folk. The darlings haven’t had any new clothes for nearly a month, and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta—solid silver railings and silver lamps and trifles of that kind. I’ve tried to make him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the last twenty years, and must go slow. He can’t see it.’

  ‘But he has the ancestral treasure-vault to draw on. There must be three millions at least in jewels and coin under his palace,’ said Hummil.

  ‘Catch a native king disturbing the family treasure! The priests forbid it, except as the last resort. Old Timbersides has added something like a quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign.’

  ‘Where the mischief does it all come from?’ said Mottram.

  ‘The country. The state of the people is enough to make you sick. I’ve known the taxmen wait by a milch-camel till the foal was born, and then hurry off the mother for arrears. And what can I do? I can’t get the court clerks to give me any accounts; I can’t raise anything more than a fat smile from the Commander-in-chief when I find out the troops are three months in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to weep when I speak to him. He has taken to the king’s peg heavily—liquor brandy for whisky and Heidsieck for soda-water.’

  ‘That’s what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even a native can’t last long at that,’ said Spurstow. ‘He’ll go out.’

  ‘And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we’ll have a council of regency, and a tutor for the young prince and hand him back his kingdom with ten years’ accumulations.’

  ‘Whereupon that young prince, having been taught all the vices of the English, will play ducks and drakes with the money, and undo ten years’ work in eighteen months. I’ve seen that business before,’ said Spurstow. ‘I should tackle the king with a light hand, if I were you, Lowndes. They’ll hate you quite enough under any circumstances.’

  ‘That’s all very well. The man who looks on can talk about the light hand; but you can’t clean a pig-sty with a pen dipped in rosewater. I know my risks; but nothing has happened yet.

  My servant’s an old Pathan, and he cooks for me. They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don’t accept food from my true friends, as they call themselves. Oh, but it’s weary work! I’d sooner be with you, Spurstow. There’s shooting near your camp.’

  ‘Would you? I don’t think it. About fifteen deaths a day don’t incite a man to shoot anything but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor devils look at you as though you ought to save them. Lord knows, I’ve tried everything. My last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old man through. He was brought to me apparently past hope, and I gave him gin and Worcester sauce with cayenne. It cured him; but I don’t recommend it.’

  ‘How do the cases run generally?’ said Hummil.

  ‘Very simple indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill, collapse, nitre, bricks to the feet and then—the burning-ghat. The last seems to be the only thing that stops the trouble. It’s black cholera, you know. Poor devils! But, I will say, little Bunsee Lal, my apothecary, works like a demon. I’ve recommended him for promotion if he comes through it all alive.’

  ‘And what are your chances, old man?’ said Mottram.

  ‘Don’t know; don’t care much; but I’ve sent the letter in. What are you doing with yourself generally?’

  ‘Sitting under a table in the tent and, spitting on the sextant to keep it cool,’ said the man of the survey. ‘Washing my eyes to avoid ophthalmia, which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a sub-surveyor understand that an error of five degrees in an angle isn’t quite so small as it looks. I’m altogether alone, y’ know, and shall be till the end of the hot weather.’

  ‘Hummil’s the lucky man,’ said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long chair. ‘He has an actual roof—torn as to the ceiling-cloth—but still a roof—over his head. He sees one train daily.

  He can get beer and soda-water, and ice it when God is good.

  He has books, pictures’—they were torn from the Graphic—‘and the society of the excellent Sub-Contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.’

  Hummil smiled grimly. ‘Yes, I’m the lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is luckier.’

  ‘How? Not—’

  ‘Yes. Went out. Last Monday.’

  ‘Ap se?’ said Spurstow, quickly, hinting the suspicion that was in everybody’s mind. There was no cholera near Hummil’s section. Even fever gives a man at least a week’s grace, and sudden death generally implied self-slaughter.

  ‘I judge no man this weather,’ said Hummil. ‘He had a touch of the sun, I fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the veranda, and told me he was going home to see his wife, in Market Street, Liverpool, that evening. I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie down. After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he had had a fit—hoped he hadn’t said anything rude. Jevins had a great idea of bettering himself socially. He was very like Chucks in his language.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle. He told the servant that he was going after buck in the morning. Naturally he fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the head accidentally. The apothecary sent in a report to my chief, and Jevins is buried somewhere out there. I’d have wired to you, Spurstow, if you could have done anything.’

  ‘You’re a queer chap,’ said Mottram. ‘If you killed the man yourself you couldn’t have been more quiet about the business.’

  ‘Good Lord! what does it matter?’ said Hummil, calmly.

  ‘I’ve got to do a lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I’m the only person that suffers. Jevins is out of it—by pure accident, of course, but out of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust a babu to drivel when he gets the chance.’

  ‘Why didn’t you let it go in as suicide?’ said Lowndes.

  ‘No direct proof. A man hasn’t many privileges in this country, but he might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day I may need a man to smother up an accident myself. Live and let live. Die and let to die.’

  ‘You take a pill,’ said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil’s white face narrowly. ‘Take a pill, and don’t be an ass. That sort of talk is skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work, If I was a Job ten times over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that I’d stay on and watch.’

  ‘Ah! I’ve lost that curiosity,’ said Hummil.

  ‘Liver out of order?’ said Lowndes, feelingly.

  ‘No. Can’t sleep. That’s worse.’

  ‘By Jove, it is!’ said Mottram. ‘I’m that way every now and then, and the fit has to wear itself out. What do you take for it?’

  ‘Nothing. What’s the use? I haven’t had ten minutes’ sleep since Friday morning.’

  ‘Poor chap! Spurstow, you ought to attend to this,’ said Mottram. ‘Now you mention it, your eyes are rather gummy and swollen.’

  Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. ‘I’ll patch him up later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride?’

  ‘Where to?’ said Lowndes, wearily. ‘We shall have to go away at eight, and there’ll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse, when I have to use him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to do?’

  ‘Begin whist again, at chick points’ (a ‘chick’ is supp
osed to be eight shillings), ‘and a gold mohur on the rub,’ said Spurstow, promptly.

  ‘Poker. A month’s pay all round for the pool—no limit— and fifty-rupee raises. Somebody would be broken before we got up,’ said Lowndes.

  ‘Can’t say that it would give me any pleasure to break any man in this company,’ said Mottram. ‘There isn’t enough excitement in it, and it’s foolish.’ He crossed over to the worn and battered little camp-piano—wreckage of a married household that had once held the bungalow—and opened the case.

  ‘It’s used up long ago,’ said Hummil. ‘The servants have picked it to pieces.’

  The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from the ragged key-board something that might once have been the ghost of a popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident interest as Mottram banged more lustily.

  ‘That’s good!’ said Lowndes. ‘By Jove! the last time I heard that song was in ’79, or thereabouts, just before I came out.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Spurstow, with pride, ‘I was home in ’80.’ And he mentioned a song of the streets popular at that date.

  Mottram executed it indifferently well. Lowndes criticized, and volunteered emendations. Mottram dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall character, and made as if to rise.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Hummil. ‘I didn’t know that you had any music in your composition. Go on playing until you can’t think of anything more. I’ll have that piano tuned up before you come again. Play something festive.’

  Very simple indeed were the tunes to which Mottram’s art and the limitations of the piano could give effect, but the men listened with pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of what they had seen or heard when they were last at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in the choking darkness of midnight, but Mottram continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle reached the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the tattered ceiling-cloth.

  In the silence after the storm he glided from the more directly personal songs of Scotland, half humming them as he played, into the Evening Hymn.

  ‘Sunday,’ said he nodding his head.

  ‘Go on. Don’t apologize for it,’ said Spurstow.

  Hummil laughed long and riotously. ‘Play it, by all means. You’re full of surprises today. I didn’t know you had such a gift of finished sarcasm. How does that thing go?’

  Mottram took up the tune.

  ‘Too slow by half. You miss the note of gratitude,’ said Hummil. ‘It ought to go to the “Grasshopper Polka”—this way.’ And he chanted, prestis-simo:

  ‘Glory to Thee, my God, this night,

  For all the blessings of the light.

  That shows we really feel our blessings. How does it go on?—’

  ‘If in the night I sleepless lie,

  My soul with sacred thought supply,

  May no ill dreams disturb my rest,—’

  ‘Quicker, Mottram!—’

  ‘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 fathoms 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 the coolies tomorrow,’ 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, the curried eggs 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 d—d 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 person 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 personality, 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: ‘I say, you surely aren’t going?’

  ‘Where I dines, I sleeps, in the language of the blessed Jorrocks,’ said Spurstow. ‘I want to have a look at your coolies tomorrow, 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 employs next day, and, saddling up, departed together, Hummil begging them to come next Sunday. As they jogged off together, Lowndes unbosomed himself to Mottram: ‘. . . And I never felt so like kicking a man at his own table in my life. 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? Did you ever know him go 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 mind the ratholes.’ 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 tonight.’

  ‘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. Goodnight, 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 a good 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 each sleeper’s nose and mouth and announced that the couches were ready.

  The men flung themselves down, adjuring the punkah-coolies by all the powers of Eblis to pull. Every door and window was shut, for the outside air was that of an
oven. The atmosphere within was only 104o, as the thermometer attested, 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 gurglings 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 tom-tom 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.