Books: The Phantom \'Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories
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Rudyard Kipling >> The Phantom \'Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories
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10 *END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
Prepared by David Reed haradda@aol.com or davidr@inconnect.com
The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories
by Rudyard Kipling
The Phantom 'Rickshaw
My Own True Ghost Story
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
The Man Who Would Be King
"The Finest Story in The World"
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW
May no ill dreams disturb my rest,
Nor Powers of Darkness me molest.
-Evening Hymn.
ONE of the few advantages that India has over England is a great
Knowability. After five years' service a man is directly or
indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundred Civilians in his
Province, all the Messes of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries,
and some fifteen hundred other people of the non-official caste. In
ten years his knowledge should be doubled, and at the end of
twenty he knows, or knows something about, every Englishman in
the Empire, and may travel anywhere and everywhere without
paying hotel-bills.
Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right, have, even
within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the
less to-day, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear
nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world
is very, very kind and helpful.
Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of Kumaon some fifteen
years ago. He meant to stay two nights, but was knocked down by
rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganized Polder's
establishment, stopped Polder's work, and nearly died in Polder's
bedroom. Polder behaves as though he had been placed under
eternal obligation by Rickett, and yearly sends the little Ricketts a
box of presents and toys. It is the same everywhere. The men who
do not take the trouble to conceal from you their opinion that you
are an incompetent ass, and the women who blacken your
character and misunderstand your wife's amusements, will work
themselves to the bone in your behalf if you fall sick or into
serious trouble.
Heatherlegh, the Doctor, kept, in addition to his regular practice, a
hospital on his private account-an arrangement of loose boxes for
Incurables, his friend called it-but it was really a sort of fitting-up
shed for craft that had been damaged by stress of weather. The
weather in India is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is
always a fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permission
to work overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally break down
and become as mixed as the metaphors in this sentence.
Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable
prescription to all his patients is, "lie low, go slow, and keep cool."
He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance
of this world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay,
who died under his hands about three years ago. He has, of course,
the right to speak authoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that
there was a crack in Pansay's head and a little bit of the Dark
World came through and pressed him to death. "Pansay went off
the handle," says Heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave at
Home. He may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to
Mrs. Keith-Wessington. My notion is that the work of the
Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he took to
brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & 0. flirtation. He
certainly was engaged to Miss Mannering, and she certainly broke
off the engagement. Then he took a feverish chill and all that
nonsense about ghosts developed. Overwork started his illness,
kept it alight, and killed him poor devil. Write him off to the
System-one man to take the work of two and a half men."
I do not believe this. I used to sit up with Pansay sometimes when
Heatherlegh was called out to patients, and I happened to be within
claim. The man would make me most unhappy by describing in a
low, even voice, the procession that was always passing at the
bottom of his bed. He had a sick man's command of language.
When he recovered I suggested that he should write out the whole
affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to
ease his mind. When little boys have learned a new bad word they
are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. And this
also is Literature.
He was in a high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-
thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two
months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the
fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned
Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing
at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he
died, and this is his version of the affair, dated 1885:
My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of air. It is not
improbable that I shall get both ere long-rest that neither the
red-coated messenger nor the midday gun can break, and change
of air far beyond that which any homeward-bound steamer can
give me. In the meantime I am resolved to stay where I am; and,
in flat defiance of my doctor's orders, to take all the world into my
confidence. You shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of
my malady; and shall, too, judge for yourselves whether any man
born of woman on this weary earth was ever so tormented as I.
Speaking now as a condemned criminal might speak ere the
drop-bolts are drawn, my story, wild and hideously improbable as
it may appear, demands at least attention. That it will ever receive
credence I utterly disbelieve. Two months ago I should have
scouted as mad or drunk the man who had dared tell me the like.
Two months ago I was the happiest man in India. Today, from
Peshawur to the sea, there is no one more wretched. My doctor
and I are the only two who know this. His explanation is, that my
brain, digestion, and eyesight are all slightly affected; giving rise
to my frequent and persistent "delusions." Delusions, indeed! I
call him a fool; but he attends me still with the same unwearied
smile, the same bland professional manner, the same neatly
trimmed red whiskers, till I begin to suspect that I am an
ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid. But you shall judge for
your-selves.
Three years ago it was my fortune my great misfortune to sail from
Gravesend to Bombay, on return from long leave, with one Agnes
Keith-Wessington, wife of an officer on the Bombay side. It does
not in the least concern you to know what manner of woman she
was. Be content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had
ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly in love
with one another. Heaven knows that I can make the admission
now without one particle of vanity. In matters of this sort there is
always one who gives and another who accepts. From the first day
of our ill-omened attachment, I was conscious that Agnes's
passion was a stronger, a more dominant, and-if I may use the
expression-a purer sentiment than mine. Whether she recognized
the fact then, I do not know. Afterward it was bitterly plain to both
of us.
Arrived at Bombay in the spring of the year, we went our
respective ways, to meet no more for the next three or four
months, when my leave and her love took us both to Simla. There
we spent the season together; and there my fire of straw burned
itself out to a pitiful end with the closing year. I attempt no
excuse. I make no apology. Mrs. Wessington had given up much
for my sake, and was prepared to give up all. From my own lips,
in August, 1882, she learned that I was sick of her presence, tired
of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice. Ninety-nine
women out of a hundred would have wearied of me as I wearied of
them; seventy-five of that number would have promptly avenged
themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation 'with other men. Mrs.
Wessington was the hundredth. On her neither my openly
expressed aversion nor the cutting brutalities with which I
garnished our interviews had the least effect.
"Jack, darling!" was her one eternal cuckoo cry: "I'm sure it's all a
mistake -a hideous mistake; and we'll be good friends again some
day. Please forgive me, Jack, dear."
I was the offender, and I knew it. That knowledge transformed my
pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hat~the
same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp
on the spider he has but half killed. And with this hate in my
bosom the season of 1882 came to an end.
Next year we met again at Simla-she with her monotonous face
and timid attempts at reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in
every fibre of my frame. Several times I could not avoid meeting
her alone; and on each occasion her words were identically the
same. Still the unreasoning wail that it was all a "mistake"; and
still the hope of eventually "making friends." I might have seen
had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She
grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with
me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to
despair. It was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly. I maintain that
she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black,
fever-stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I might
have been a little kinder to her. But that really is a "delusion." I
could not have continued pretending to love her when I didn't;
could I? It would have been unfair to us both.
Last year we met again-on the same terms as before. The same
weary appeal, and the same curt answers from my lips. At least I
would make her see how wholly wrong and hopeless were her
attempts at resuming the old relationship. As the season wore on,
we fell apart-that is to say, she found it difficult to meet me, for I
had other and more absorbing interests to attend to. When I think it
over quietly in my sick-room, the season of 1884 seems a confused
nightmare wherein light and shade were fantastically intermingled
-my courtship of little Kitty Mannering; my hopes, doubts, and
fears; our long rides together; my trembling avowal of attachment;
her reply; and now and again a vision of a white face flitting by in
the 'rickshaw with the black and white liveries I once watched for
so earnestly; the wave of Mrs. Wessington's gloved hand; and,
when she met me alone, which was but seldom, the irksome
monotony of her appeal. I loved Kitty Mannering; honestly,
heartily loved her, and with my love for her grew my hatred for
Agnes. In August Kitty and I were engaged. The next day I met
those accursed "magpie" jhampanies at the back of Jakko, and,
moved by some passing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell Mrs.
Wessington everything. She knew it already.
"So I hear you're engaged, Jack dear." Then, without a moment's
pause -"I'm sure it's all a mistake-a hideous mistake. We shall be as
good friends some day, Jack, as we ever were."
My answer might have made even a man wince. It cut the dying
woman before me like the blow of' a whip. "Please forgive me,
Jack; I didn't mean to make you angry; but it's true, it's true!"
And Mrs. Wessington broke down completely. I turned away and
left her to finish her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a
moment or two, that I had been an unutterably mean hound. I
looked back, and saw that she had turned her 'rickshaw with the
idea, I suppose, of overtaking me.
The scene and its surroundings were photographed on my memory.
The rain-swept sky (we were at the end of the wet weather), the
sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven
cliffs formed a gloomy background against which the black and
white liveries of the jhampanies, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and
Mrs. Wessington's down-bowed golden head stood out clearly.
She was holding her handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning
hack exhausted against the 'rickshaw cushions. I turned my horse
up a bypath near the Sanjowlie Reservoir and literally ran away.
Once I fancied I heard a faint call of "Jack!" This may have been
imagination. I never stopped to verify it. Ten minutes later I came
across Kitty on horseback; and, in the delight of a long ride with
her, forgot all about the interview.
A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and the inexpressible burden
of her existence was removed from my life. I went Plainsward
perfectly happy. Before three months were over I had forgotten all
about her, except that at times the discovery of some of her old
letters reminded me unpleasantly of our bygone relationship. By
January I had disinterred what was left of our correspondence from
among my scattered belongings and had burned it. At the
beginning of April of this year, 1885, I was at Simla-semi-deserted
Simla-once more, and was deep in lover's talks and walks with
Kitty. It was decided that we should be married at the end of June.
You will understand, therefore, that, loving Kitty as I did, I am not
saying too much when I pronounce myself to have been, at that
time, the happiest man in India.
Fourteen delightful days passed almost before I noticed their flight.
Then, aroused to the sense of what was proper among mortals
circumstanced as we were, I pointed out to Kitty that an
engagement ring was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as
an engaged girl; and that she must forthwith come to Hamilton's to
be measured for one. Up to that moment, I give you my word, we
had completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To Hamilton's we
accordingly went on the 15th of April, 1885. Remember
that-whatever my doctor may say to the contrary-I was then in
perfect health, enjoying a well-balanced mind and an absolute
tranquil spirit. Kitty and I entered Hamilton's shop together, and
there, regardless of the order of affairs, I measured Kitty for the
ring in the presence of the amused assistant. The ring was a
sapphire with two diamonds. We then rode out down the slope
that leads to the Combermere Bridge and Peliti's shop.
While my Waler was cautiously feeling his way over the loose
shale, and Kitty was laughing and chattering at my side-while all
Simla, that is to say as much of it as had then come from the
Plains, was grouped round the Reading-room and Peliti's
veranda,-I was aware that some one, apparently at a vast distance,
was calling me by my Christian name. It struck me that I had heard
the voice before, but when and where I could not at once
determine. In the short space it took to cover the road between the
path from Hamilton's shop and the first plank of the Comber-mere
Bridge I had thought over half a dozen people who might have
committed such a solecism, and had eventually decided that it
must have been singing in my ears. Immediately opposite Peliti's
shop my eye was arrested by the sight of four jharnpanies in
"magpie" livery, pulling a yellow-paneled, cheap, bazar 'rickshaw.
In a moment my mind flew back to the previous season and Mrs.
Wessington with a sense of irritation and disgust. Was it not
enough that the woman was dead and done with, without her black
and white servitors reappearing to spoil the day's happiness?
Whoever employed them now I thought I would call upon, and ask
as a personal favor to change her Jhampanies' livery. I would hire
the men myself, and, if necessary, buy their coats from off their
backs. It is impossible to say here what a flood of undesirable
memories their presence evoked.
"Kitty," I cried, "there are poor Mrs. Wessington's jhampanies
turned up again! I wonder who has them now?"
Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly last season, and had
always been interested in the sickly woman.
"What? Where?" she asked. "I can't see them anywhere."
Even as she spoke her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw
himself directly in front of the advancing 'rickshaw. I had scarcely
time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror,
horse and rider passed through men and carriage as if they had
been thin air.
"What's the matter?" cried Kitty; "what made you call out so
foolishly, Jack? If I am engaged I don't want all creation to know
about it. There was lots of space between the mule and the
veranda; and, if you think I can't ride
-There!"
Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a
hand-gallop in the direction of the Bandstand; fully expecting, as
she herself afterward told me, that I should follow her. What was
the matter? Nothing indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or
that Simla was haunted with devils. I reined in my impatient cob,
and turned round. The 'rickshaw had turned too, and now stood
immediately facing me, near the left railing of the Comber-mere
Bridge.
"Jack! Jack, darling!" (There was no mistake about the words this
time: they rang through my brain as if they had been shouted in my
ear.) "It's some hideous mistake, I'm sure. Please forgive me, jack,
and let's be friends again."
The 'rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and inside, as I hope and pray
daily for the death I dread by night, sat Mrs. Keith-Wessington,
handkerchief in hand, and golden head bowed on her breast.
How long I stared motionless I do not know. Finally, I was
aroused by my ysce taking the Waler's bridle and asking whether I
was ill. From the horrible to the commonplace is but a step. I
tumbled off my horse and dashed, half fainting, into Peliti's for a
glass of cherry-brandy. There two or three couples were gathered
round the coffee-tables discussing the gossip of the day. Their
trivialities were more comforting to me just then than the
consolations of religion could have been. I plunged into the midst
of the conversation at once; chatted, laughed, and jested with a
face (when I caught a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white and drawn
as that of a corpse. Three or four mem noticed my condition; and,
evidently setting it down to the results of over-many pegs,
charitably endeavoured to draw me apart from the rest of the
loungers. But I refused to be led away. I wanted the company of
my kind-as a child rushes into the midst of the dinner-party after a
fright in the dark. I must have talked for about ten minutes or so,
though it seemed an eternity to me, when I heard Kitty's clear
voice outside inquiring for me. In another minute she had entered
the shop, prepared to roundly upbraid me for failing so signally in
my duties. Something in my face stopped her.
"Why, Jack," she cried, "what have you been doing? What has
happened? Are you ill?" Thus driven into a direct lie, I said that
the sun had been a little too much for me. It was close upon five
o'clock of a cloudy April afternoon, and the sun had been hidden
all day. I saw my mistake as soon as the words were out of my
mouth: attempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed
Kitty in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my
acquaintances. I made some excuse (I have forgotten what) on the
score of my feeling faint; and cantered away to my hotel, leaving
Kitty to finish the ride by herself.
In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter.
Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal
Civilian in the year of grace, 1885, presumably sane, certainly
healthy, driven in terror from my sweetheart's side by the
apparition of a woman who had been dead and buried eight
months ago. These were facts that I could not blink. Nothing was
further from my thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington
when Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop. Nothing was more utterly
commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti's. It was
broad daylight. The road was full of people; and yet here, look
you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of
Nature's ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the
grave.
Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rickshaw: so that my first hope
that some woman marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired the
carriage and the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and
again I went round this treadmill of thought; and again and again
gave up baffled and in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as
the apparition. I had originally some wild notion of confiding it all
to Kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in her arms
defying the ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw. "After all," I
argued, "the presence of the 'rickshaw is in itself enough to prove
the existence of a spectral illusion. One may see ghosts of men and
women, but surely never of
coolies and carriages. The whole thing is absurd Fancy the ghost
of a hill-man!"
Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to
overlook my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. My
Divinity was still very wroth, and a personal apology was
necessary. I explained, with a fluency born of night-long pondering
over a falsehood, that I had been attacked with sudden palpitation
of the heart-the result of indigestion. This eminently practical
solution had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out that afternoon with
the shadow of my first lie dividing us.
Nothing would please her save a canter round Jakko. With my
nerves still unstrung from the previous night I feebly protested
against the notion, suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the
Boileaugunge road - anything rather than the Jakko round. Kitty
was angry and a little hurt: so I yielded from fear of provoking
further misunderstanding, and we set out together toward Chota
Simla. We walked a greater part of the way, and, according to our
custom, cantered from a mile or so below the Convent to the
stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched
horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as
we neared the crest of the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs.
Wessington all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road
bore witness to our oldtime walks and talks. The bowlders were
full of it; the pines sang it aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrents
giggled and chuck led unseen over the shameful story; and the
wind in my ears chanted the iniquity aloud.
As a fitting climax, in the middle of the level men call the Ladies'
Mile the Horror was awaiting me. No other 'rickshaw was in
sight-only the four black and white jhampanies, the yellow-
paneled carriage, and the golden head of the woman within-all
apparently just as I had left them eight months and one fortnight
ago! For an instant I fancied that Kitty must see what I saw-we
were so marvelously sympathetic in all things. Her next words
undeceived me-'~Not a soul in sight! Come along, Jack, and I'll
race you to the Reservoir buildings!" Her wiry little Arab was off
like a bird, my Waler following close behind, and in this order we
dashed under the cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty yards
of the 'rickshaw. I pulled my Waler and fell back a little. The
'rickshaw was directly in the middle of the road; and once more the
Arab passed through it, my horse following. "Jack! Jack dear!
Pease forgive me," rang with a wail in my ears, and, after an
interval:-"It's a mistake, a hideous mistake!"
I spurred my horse like a man possessed. When I turned my head
at the Reservoir works, the black and white liveries were still
waiting-patiently waiting-under the grey hillside, and the wind
brought me a mocking echo of the words I had just heard. Kitty
bantered me a good deal on my silence throughout the remainder
of the ride. I had been talking up till then wildly and at random.
To save my life I could not speak afterward naturally, and from
Sanjowlie to the Church wisely held my tongue.
I was to dine with the Mannerings that night, and had barely time
to canter home to dress. On the road to Elysium Hill I overheard
two men talking together in the dusk.-"It's a curious thing," said
one, "how completely all trace of it disappeared. You know my
wife was insanely fond of the woman ('never could see anything in
her myself), and wanted me to pick up her old 'rickshaw and
coolies if they were to be got for love or money. Morbid sort of
fancy I call it; but I've got to do what the Memsahib tells me.
Would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all
four of the men-they were brothers-died of cholera on the way to
Hardwar, poor devils, and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the
man himself. 'Told me he never used a dead Memsakib's
'rickshaw. 'Spoiled his luck. Queer notion, wasn't it? Fancy poor
little Mrs. Wessington spoiling any one's luck except her own!" I
laughed aloud at this point; and my laugh jarred on me as I uttered
it. So there were ghosts of 'rickshaws after all, and ghostly
employments in the other world! How much did Mrs. Wessington
give her men? What were their hours? Where did they go?
And for visible answer to my last question I saw the infernal Thing
blocking my path in the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by short
cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I laughed aloud a second time
and checked my laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was going
mad. Mad to a certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that
I reined in my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and politely
wished Mrs. Wessington "Good-evening." Her answer was one I
knew only too well. I listened to the end; and replied that I had
heard it all before, but should be delighted if she had anything
further to say. Some malignant devil stronger than I must have
entered into me that evening, for I have a dim recollection of
talking the commonplaces of the day for five minutes to the Thing
in front of me.
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