The Phantom Rickshaw | Page 7

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 Combermere 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 syce 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 men
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.