Part 10

Here was a mystery, and with it a realization of how little we knew of this lady who had died because she wished to die. I was aware that her husband’s christian name was William, but beyond that I knew practically nothing of him. The sister of the nursing home had both written and telegraphed to the husband, but no reply had been received. It was afterwards ascertained that he was away at the time and that the house was shut up.

I was determined to find out the meaning of the tragedy, but it was some months before I was possessed of the whole of the story. The poor lady’s marriage had been unhappy. Her husband had neglected her, and they were completely estranged. She formed a friendship with a man of middle age who lived near by. This is he whose christian name was Frank and who was, I imagine, the giver of the brooch. The friendship grew into something more emotional. She became, indeed, desperately attached to him, and he to her. Their intimacy was soon so conspicuous as to lead to gossip in the neighbourhood, while the state of the two lovers themselves was one of blank despair. She looked to him as Pompillia looked to Caponsacchi. He was her saviour, her “soldier saint, the lover of her life.” To him she could repeat Pompillia’s words: “You are ordained to call and I to come.”

It became evident in time that the only course the two could adopt was to run away together. She, on her part, counted no cost and would have followed him blindly to the world’s end. He, on the other hand, hesitated. He did count the cost and found it crushing. His means were small. His future depended on himself. An elopement would involve ruin, poverty and squalor as well as, in time, a fretful awakening from a glorious dream.

He did the only thing possible. He told her that they must part, that he must give her up, that he must not see her again, that he must not even write to her. It was a wise and, indeed, inevitable decision; but to her it seemed to foretell the end of her life. He kept the compact, but she had not the strength to accept it. It was something that was impossible. She endeavoured to get in touch with him again and again, and in many ways, but without success. Hard as it was, he had kept to his resolve.

Then came the episode of the operation. Now, she thought, if she wrote to him to say that she was in London and alone and that she was about to undergo an operation that might cause her death, he must come to see her or he must at least reply to her letter. She felt assured that she would hear from him at last, for, after all that had passed between them, he could not deny her one little word of comfort in this tragic moment.

She wrote to him on the eve of her operation. The rest of the story I have told.

VIII

A RESTLESS NIGHT

It was in Rajputana, in the cold weather, that we came upon the dâk bungalow. I was proceeding south from a native state where I had met an officer in the Indian Medical Service. He was starting on a medical tour of inspection, and for the first stage of the journey we travelled together. He was glad to have a member of his own profession to talk to.

Towards the end of the day we halted at this dâk bungalow. It was situated in a poor waste which was possessed of two features only—dried earth and cactus bushes. So elemental was the landscape that it might have been a part of the primeval world before the green things came into being. The cactus, bloated, misshaped and scarred by great age, looked like some antediluvian growth which had preceded the familiar plants with leaves. If a saurian had been in sight browsing on this ancient scrub the monster would have been in keeping. Some way distant across the plain was a native village, simple enough to be a settlement of neolithic men. Although it was but a splash of brown amidst the faded green it conveyed the assurance that there were still men on the earth.

The bungalow was simple as a packing-case. It showed no pretence at decoration, while there was in its making not a timber nor a trowel of plaster which could have been dispensed with. In the centre of the miserly place was a common room with a veranda in front and a faintly-suggested kitchen at the back. Leading out of the common room, on either side, was a bedroom, and the establishment was complete. The central room was provided with one meal-stained table and two dissolute-looking chairs of the kind found in a servant’s attic. The walls were bare save for certain glutinous splashes where insects had been squashed by the slipper of some tormented guest. The place smelt of grease and paraffin, toned by a faint suggestion of that unclean aromatic odour which clings to Indian dwellings. The bedrooms were alike—square chambers with cement floors, plain as an empty water-tank. An inventory of their respective contents was completed by the following items—one low bedstead void of bedding, one chair, one table with traces of varnish in places and one looking-glass in a state of desquamation. To these may be added one window and two doors. One door led into the common room, the other into a cemented bathroom containing a battered tin bath, skinned even of its paint.

We each of us had an Indian servant or bearer who, with mechanical melancholy, made the toilet table pretentious by placing upon it the entire contents of our respective dressing bags.

After dinner, of a sort, we sat on the penitential chairs and smoked, leaning our elbows on the table for our greater comfort. The doctor was eloquent upon his medical experiences in the district, upon his conflicts with pessimistic patients and his struggles with fanaticism and ignorance. The average sick man, he told me, had more confidence in a dried frog suspended from the neck in a bag than in the whole British Pharmacopœia. Most of his narratives have passed out of my memory, but one incident I had reason to remember.

It concerned a native from the adjacent village who was working as a stone-mason and whose eye was pierced by a minute splinter of stone. As a result the eye became inflamed and sightless, save that the man retained in the damaged organ an appreciation of light. As bearing upon the case and its sequel I must explain the circumstances of “sympathetic ophthalmia.” When an eye is damaged as this was, and inflammation ensues, it is not uncommon for the mischief to spread to the sound globe and destroy that also. In order to prevent such a catastrophe it is necessary to remove the injured and useless eye as promptly as possible. That was the uniform practice in my time. The operation in question was urged upon the native an order to prevent sympathetic ophthalmia in the sound eye, but he declined it, preferring to consult a magician who lived a day’s journey from the village. The consultation took place and the man returned to the local dispensary; for although he still had good vision in the sound eye it was beginning to trouble him.

The surgeon considered that the operation was now probably too late; but he yet urged it upon the ground that there was some prospect of success, while, on the other hand, failure could make the patient’s condition no more desperate. The man, persuaded against his will, at last consented, and the useless eyeball was removed. Unfortunately the operation was too late; the sound eye became involved beyond recovery and the miserable native found himself totally blind. He ignorantly ascribed his loss of sight to the operation.

Before my friend left the station the man was brought into his room for the last time, and when it was explained to him that he was in the doctor’s presence he threw his arms aloft and, shrieking aloud, cursed the man of healing with a vehemence which should have brought down fire from heaven. He called upon every deity in the Indian mythology to pour torments upon this maimer of men, to blast his home and annihilate his family root and branch. He blackened the sky with curses because the darkness which engulfed him prevented him from tearing out with his nails the eyes of this murderous Englishman. Foaming and screaming, and almost voiceless from the violence of his speech, he was led away to stumble about his village, where for weeks he rent the air with his awful imprecations. Whether the poor man was now alive or dead the doctor could not say, for he had heard no more of him.

In due course we agreed that the time had come to go to bed. The doctor said that he always occupied the right-hand bedroom when he came to the bungalow, but as it was found that my servant had deposited my bedding and effects in this particular sepulchre, he retired to the chamber across the hall.

I did not look forward to a night in this so-called “Rest House.” The bedroom was as comfortless as a prison cell and as desolate as the one sound room in a ruin. There was some comfort in contemplating the familiar articles displayed on the dressing-table, yet they looked curiously out of place.

I locked the door leading to the common room, but found that the door to the bathroom had no lock; while there was merely a bolt to the outer door that led from the bathroom into the open. This bolt I shot, but left the intermediate door ajar, feeling that I should like to assure myself from time to time that the far room was empty. There was one small paraffin lamp provided, but the glass shade of it had been broken, so that it was only when the wick was very low that it would burn without smoking. By the glimmer of this malodorous flame I undressed and, blowing it out, got into bed.

The place was as black as a pit, as stifling and as silent. I lay awake a long time, for the stillness was oppressive. I found myself listening to it. It seemed to be made up of some faint, far-off sounds of mysterious import of which I imagined I could catch the rhythm. It was possible to believe that these half-imagined pulsations were produced by the rush of the earth through space, and that the stillness of the night made them audible.

I went to sleep in time and slept—as I afterwards discovered—for some hours, when I was aroused by a noise in the room. I was wideawake in an instant, with my head raised off the pillow, listening rigidly for the sound that I must have heard in my sleep. The place was in solid darkness. I felt that there was something alive in the room, something that moved.

At last the sound came again. It was the pattering of the feet of some animal. The creature was coming towards the bed. I could hear others moving along the floor, always from the bathroom, until the place seemed to be alive with invisible creatures. Such is the effect of imagination that I conceived these unknown animals to be about the size of retrievers. I wondered if their heads would reach the level of the couch, until I was relieved to hear that many were now running about under the bed. I resolved to shout at them but fancied that the noise of my own voice would be as unpleasant to hear as the voice of another and unknown human being in the room.

I noticed now a faint odour of musk, and was glad to think that these pattering feet belonged to musk-rats, and that these animals must have entered through the drain hole I had observed in the outer wall of the bathroom. I dislike rats, and especially rats in a bedroom. This prejudice was not made less when I felt that some of them were climbing up on to the bed. I was certain I could hear one crawling over my clothes which lay on the chair by the bedside. I was certain that others were searching about on the dressing-table, and recognized—or thought I did—the clatter of a shoe-horn that lay there. I recalled stories in which men had been attacked by hordes of rats, and I wondered when they would attack me, for, by this time, the whole room seemed to be full of rats, and I could picture legions swarming in from the plain outside in a long snake-like column.

In a while I was sure that a rat was on the pillow close to my head. My hair seemed to be flicked by the whiskers of one of these fœtid brutes. This was more than I could tolerate, so I sprang up in bed and shouted. There was a general scuttle for the far door; but it was some time before I ventured to pass my hand over the pillow to assure myself that a rat was not still there.

I had a mind to get out of bed and light the lamp; but to do this seemed to be like taking a step into a black pit. I lay down again. For a while all was quiet. Then came once more the pattering of feet from the direction of the bathroom, the sickly odour of musk and a conviction that at least a hundred rats were pouring into the room. They crept up to the bed and ran about beneath it with increasing boldness. I was meditating another shout when there came a sound in the room that made every vein in my body tingle. It arose from under the bed, a hollow scraping sound which I felt sure was due to the movement of a human being. I thought it was caused by the scraping of a belt buckle on the cement floor, the belt being worn by a man who was crawling on his stomach. I disliked this sound more than the rats.

At this moment, to add to my discomfort, I felt a rat crawling across my bare foot, a beast with small, cold paws and hot fur. I kicked it off so that it fell with a thud on the floor. I shouted again and, driven to desperation, jumped out of bed. I half expected to tread on a mass of rats, but felt the hard floor instead. I went to the dressing-table and struck a light. The place was empty, but I could not see under the bed. The match went out and in the blackness I expected some fresh surprise to develop. I managed to strike another match and to light the lamp.

I placed it on the floor and looked under the bed. What I saw there I took at first to be a piece of a human skull. I got a stick and touched it. It seemed lighter than a dried bone. I dragged it out into the room. It was a cake of unleavened bread, much used by the natives—dried up into a large curled chip. The rats had been dragging this away and had so produced the scraping sound which I had exaggerated into something sinister.

Having convinced myself that the room was empty I blocked up the drain hole in the outer wall by placing the bath in front of it and, feeling secure from any further disturbance, returned to bed, leaving the lamp alight on the table.