Rendezvous with Horror & Nightmare Tales (2 in 1)

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by Ruskin Bond


  A Man's Theory

  By Alice Perrin

  John Orchard was one of those irritating people who are born with a talent for what is commonly called 'knowing best.' As a child he was detested by his companions because he invariably tried to correct and improve their methods of playing games; as a youth he was loathed by his contemporaries because of his pedantic ways and opinionated self-complacency; as a man he was unpopular because he never hesitated to contradict, and lay down the law (the annoying part being that he was so often right), and, after he married, his wife's affection for him changed to hatred, this story will explain why.

  He was a prig of the first water, and a very successful prig, too. He did splendidly at school so far as learning was concerned. He conducted himself with caution and credit at college. He passed first of his year into the Indian Civil Service, and, apparently, knew more about the country and the natives before he went out than did many men with twenty years' experience of both. He comported himself with the calm self-confidence of a being of mature age; he was well-read, clear-headed and far-seeing, and his first twelve months in India promised exceeding well for his future career.

  During the second year of his service he was transferred to a large military station, and there poor Mr Orchard led the life of a dog, owing to the 'roasting' he received from the subatterns of the various regiments. He was dragged from his bed in the small hours of the morning and made to ride his washerman's donkey round his own garden. He was tossed in a tablecloth after a big club dinner, together with the glass and crockery, remains of dessert and wine-dregs. He was insulted, buffeted, laughed at, chaffed, until he was utterly and completely miserable, and with tears of rage and mortification in his eyes besought his commissioner to transfer him to a more congenial atmosphere. Many men would have profited by the experience, and emerged wiser, if sadder, individuals, but Orchard's trials merely had the effect of planting in his breast a deadly and eternal hatred of all things military, and of making him more dictatorial and opinionated than ever.

  He was sent to a very small civil station, where his talents and position found some recognition; that is to say, he could argue and assert as much as he pleased in the little club, without danger of contradiction, except of a deferential nature. He gave dinner-parties to the few ladies the place could boast of, and showed them the proper way to manage servants and order meals. Having private means of his own, he was much respected, and the delightful manner in which he had arranged his rooms was greatly admired. He was also good-looking (in a rather common-place, uninteresting way), and he had not been settled in his new quarters more than six months before he discovered that he found considerable favour in the eyes of the civil surgeons' pretty little daughter. Mary Forde took him at his own valuation, and thought him perfect. She was a single-hearted, unselfish girl, who, being motherless, had been educated under the care of a maiden aunt at Bedford, until she was old enough to join her father in India. Orchard was the first man who had paid her any serious attention, and it is doubtful if he would have done so, had he not one evening suddenly caught the admiring gaze of her soft blue eyes fixed upon him, while he was expounding his theories on whist to a man who had been an adept at the game when John was yet a schoolboy.

  He began to think about Mary Forde. He considered that a man with money of his own, and good prospects, might safely marry early in life without harming his career. It gave him more social standing, and established a home, provided that the girl was healthy, good-tempered and obedient. In his own case he was fully aware that, matrimonially speaking, he could do vastly better for himself than propose to Mary Forde, but, at the same time, he was genuinely attracted by her quiet manner and sweet face, and felt convinced he might do a great deal worse. He gave himself six weeks to consider the matter, during which time Mary was miserable, doubting whether he really meant to propose, and torturing herself with the conviction that if he did she was not nearly good enough for him.

  At the end of the allotted time he drove to the civil surgeon's house one morning before breakfast. (John was exactly the kind of man who would propose before breakfast.) He found Mary busy in the garden among the roses, and half an hour later she was his promised wife.

  The wedding took place some three months from that date. He chose her trousseau (he had excellent taste), he selected her ayah, he made all the arrangements for the ceremony, and allowed her no voice in any matter at all. She meekly acquiesced in everything, so certain was she always that John knew best, a theory that coincided entirely with John's ideas.

  They were married in April, and shortly afterwards were transferred to one of the hottest and driest stations in Northern India. There was no question of Mary going to the hills, for, as John replied to an interfering friend who had suggested such a proceeding, 'a wife's place was with her husband'. His wife, thank goodness, was young and strong, and if he could stand the heat she could, too. And, indeed, Mary would have been the first to cry out against such a plan had she been given any choice in the matter.

  She bore the hot weather remarkably well, thus justifying John's opinion, and it was not until after her baby was born, the following summer, that she began to show any symptoms of flagging.

  "Better send her to the hills," advised the doctor.

  "Nonsense," replied Orchard; "she will pick up directly the child is a little older. She shall wean him in three months, and a baby is always better in the heat. In two or three years we shall take him home and leave him there."

  Mrs Orchard's slender hands clasped the small bundle closer to her. Leave him at home when he was so little, and would forget her! Awful thought! But if John said so, it would have to be. She had begun to recognise of late that his will was cruelly inexorable. At any rate, he was quite right about the hills now, she would feel stronger later on, and she could never desert her husband. Still, during the long, stuffy nights, when the sheets of her bed felt as if they had just been removed from the front of a roaring fire, when the hot winds howled all day, and sometimes all night, and John would not allow wet grass screens in the doorways because he considered them unhealthy, she longed and craved for a breath of cool, pure air. She lay awake night after night gasping for breath, and patiently patting and soothing the child, that cried and whined continuously with the irritation of prickly heat and mosquitoes. It was a pet theory of her husband's that babies should never be carried up and down, or even moved from their beds when they cried at night.

  "Get the child into good habits from the beginning," he would say, "and it will save an infinity of trouble afterwards, besides laying an excellent moral foundation for his future character. A child should never be allowed its own way in anything."

  Therefore, when John junior yelled and screamed in the night-time, his mother was obliged to lie and listen to him until John senior was sound asleep (nothing ever seemed to disturb his rest), and then followed hours of patient croonings and pattings, and pacings up and down the room until the little fellow fell unwillingly asleep and was unconsciously restored to his cradle.

  The days and nights grew drier and hotter and more unendurable. Mrs Orchard became thinner and paler and unnaturally nervous. The sight of a rat in her bedroom one night sent her into hysterics, and it took all her husband's sternest rebukes to calm her down. She slept little and ate less, and wore herself out during the day housekeeping and looking after the child—now nearly six weeks old. She had no English nurse, because John considered a good ayah far better for a young baby, and he was no doubt right; but Mary could never feel any confidence in an ayah, and consequently did far more for the child herself than was really necessary.

  So continued her sleepless nights and busy days, until she could hardly drag one foot after the other, and at last, one evening when they were sitting together in the drawing-room after dinner, John noticed the change in his wife.

  "You want a tonic" he announced, "and you must get more sleep at night. The child must be put into another room with the ayah. You m
ust have got him into ridiculously bad habits, allowing him to disturb you so. Once a baby is in its cot it ought to go to sleep without any fuss. Children in England sleep all night through."

  "But, John, dear, the nights are so awful out here at this time of year. No one can sleep" ("except you," she might have added), "and poor baby is a mass of prickly heat."

  "He is a self-willed little beggar, and he must be taught how to behave himself. I can't have him wearing his mother to a skeleton." Now, Mary, don't move, as a fretful cry arose from the bedroom. "He knows you will go and pat him to sleep if he makes enough noise, and he's only trying it on."

  "But the ayah has gone to her food, and he is alone," she said anxiously, half-rising; but her husband laid a restraining hand on her arm. The fretful cry went on.

  "He will stop in a minute," he said, with his smile of superior wisdom, "when he finds you take no notice."

  Mary lay back in her chair unwillingly, and sighed. The night was stifling, the crowds of motley insects were buzzing and beating round every lamp in the room, while the lizards licked them down wholesale. There was a dense haze of dust and heat in the air, and outside the stars were scarcely visible, while the harsh hum of crickets and the barking of weary dogs were the only sounds that cut through the dark, hot stillness. The cries from the bedroom increased gradually until baby was roaring lustily. John Orchard put out a warning hand.

  "Don't move," he said again, in a voice of authority. "Discipline can't be commenced too early, and the sooner he learns that he cannot have his own way the better for us all. The young man has a fine temper of his own, I must say!"

  "Oh, John, I must go to him. Something is wrong. He never cries like that for nothing."

  "Doesn't he? I've heard him often enough. The only difference is that he has never before howled like that without your going to him. I'm determined you sha'n't be a slave to that child, Mary. It's nothing but sheer temper, a regular cry of rage."

  He took up the newspaper and read calmly. Mary began to cry. She dared not openly disobey her husband, she had never done such a thing even over the smallest matter.

  Presently, the screams grew less violent, and changed to a feeble wail.

  "What did I tell you?" said John, triumphantly. "After tonight you will have no more bother with him. Now he has stopped. He's tired of making such a row and has gone to sleep."

  He looked up from the paper and found that Mary had noiselessly left the room. The next moment he heard a shriek (certainly not from the baby) followed by a crash.

  "Damn!" he muttered, and, rising, reluctantly from his chair, he crossed the hall and entered the bedroom, which was quite dark, and as he advanced his foot struck against something that clattered. It was the hand lamp that usually stood on the bedroom mantelpiece.

  "Mary?" he said doubtfully, with fear creeping through his veins.

  There was no answer. He fetched a lamp from the hall, and saw his wife lying on the floor by the cradle, a huddled, unconscious heap. He held the light aloft and peered into the little bed. The baby face was white and still, the tiny fists tightly clenched. From the child's neck a narrow red stream trickled across the sheet, and on the pillow, hesitating whether to go or stay, and with its head and paws dyed crimson, sat a large grey rat.

  The White Tiger

  By Alice Perrin

  He was called the White Tiger by the villagers of the district because his yellow skin was pale with age, and his stripes so faded and far apart as to be almost invisible.

  Having grown too large and heavy for cattle killing with any ease, he had lately become a man-eater, and terrible were the stories told by those who had seen him, and escaped the fatal blow of his huge paw. He was described as being the size of a bull-buffalo, with a belly that reached the ground, and a white moon between his ears, true tokens of the man-eater, as every native of India knows. He was said to have the power of assuming different shapes, and to lure his prey by the imitation of a human voice, and certainly his craft and cunning were such that not even Mar Singh, the local shikaree, had ever been able to trap him, or obtain a shot at him with his famous match-lock gun. And, Mar Singh had seen the tiger often, knew his favourite haunts and lairs, and could point out the very trees upon which he preferred to sharpen his murderous claws.

  The brute continued to levy his terrible tax on the scanty population of a remote district, until the women and children were afraid to leave the village, and the men went out to work in the fields fearing for their lives.

  At last, the increasing number of victims attracted the attention of the local authorities, and a reward of a hundred rupees was placed on the head of the White Tiger, with the result that Mar Singh, who clothed himself in khaki with a disreputable turban to match, and was regarded in his village as the wariest of hunters, redoubled his efforts to bring about the destruction of this awful scourge. Also, now that the fame of the White Tiger's misdeeds had penetrated to headquarters, it was more than likely that a party of 'sahibs' would appear on the scene with elephants and rifles, in which case, though the tiger would be doomed, the reward would be distributed amongst the mahouts and the beaters, and Mar Singh himself would only receive a share.

  So, night after night he perched in the branches of the trees above the favourite routes of the enemy, and from sunrise to sunset he haunted the outskirts of the jungle, and hung about the drinking-pools in the bed of the shrinking river, for, (unlike his cattle and game-killing brothers) the man-eater may be sought for at all hours. But to no purpose, the White Tiger seized a plump human victim once every few days, and Mar Singh's vision of the reward grew faint.

  "The striped one is surely an evil spirit, and no beast at all!" said Mar Singh, who never uttered the word tiger if he could help it, for fear of ill-luck.

  He had come in weary and crestfallen from a long day's search, having actually caught a glimpse of the White Tiger, and followed the tracks of the huge, square pugs to the edge of a thorny thicket, without the chance of a shot that could have taken effect; and he was pouring out his irritation and disgust to Kowta, his half-brother, who sat at the door of the family hovel contentedly smoking a hookah.

  "Without doubt," agreed Kowta, "and therefore, would it not be wiser to let the sahib slay the Evil One if he be able?"

  "What sahib?" asked Mar Singh sharply, pausing in the act of cleaning the precious match-lock gun, which was the envy and admiration of the village.

  "Then thou has not heard the news?" said Kowta, innocently. "A sahib has pitched his camp within one day's march of the village, and they say he has come to hunt the White Devil."

  The dreaded blow had fallen, and Mar Singh danced with rage.

  "I will give him no news of the tiger. I will tell him nothing, and see, too, that thou remainest silent, Kowta, when he sends for information, else will it be the worse for thee!"

  Kowta twiddled his big toe in the dust, always a sign of hesitation with a native, and Mar Singh scented trouble. He knew that Kowta was heavily in debt to the village usurer, and that sahibs often paid well for news of a tiger's movements. He was also aware that Kowta was jealous of his standing and reputation in the village, which would be increased ten-fold could he but destroy the tiger and earn the magnificent reward.

  He changed his tone.

  "See, brother," he began insinuatingly, "the utmost that the sahib would give thee might, perchance, be ten rupees, and thy share of the Government reward would scarcely be more than two. What are twelve rupees compared with forty, added to half the whiskers and claws of the Evil One, and perhaps, the lucky bone as well? All this will I give thee when I slay the beast, as I most assuredly must do if the sahib doth not interfere."

  Kowta puffed stolidly at his hookah and was maddeningly silent.

  "Also," continued Mar Singh, eagerly, "consider the trouble that a sahib's camp brings upon a village. His servants, being rascals, will order supplies in the name of the sahib, and pay us nothing for them, and the police will annoy us if we
complain. We shall be forced to beat the jungle, and many will be hurt and some killed, if not by the tiger then by other wild beasts, also——"

  "But how am I to tell that thou wilt give me the forty rupees and half the claws and whiskers? Whereas, a sahib holds to his promises, as we all know."

  "I swear it!" cried Mar Singh with fervour, "by the skin of the White Devil I swear to deal well by thee!"

  So, after some further argument, Kowta reluctantly agreed to take his brother's side, and Mar Singh unfolded a scheme by which Kowta was to proceed to the tents of the unwelcome Englishman, and pose as the shikaree of the district, possessing an intimate knowledge of the tiger's habits. Mar Singh would keep Kowta well-informed as to the movements of the tiger through the medium of the postman who ran from village to village with news and letters, and the sahib, at all hazards, was to be led in the wrong directions, until he grew weary of the fruitless chase, and withdrew from the district with his camp and elephants.

  Kowta, therefore, proceeded to don the khaki costume, which he had long coveted, and the next morning he started on his diplomatic errand, while Mar Singh betook himself to the jungle to watch the movements of the White Tiger, that he might warn Kowta by the evening runner as to which locality must be avoided the following day.

  Kowta enjoyed himself immensely at the camp. He arrived at sundown, and was interviewed by the sahib himself, to whom he gave voluble, but entirely false, information concerning the tiger, and promised to lead him direct to the animal's lair in the morning. The sahib, being young and new to the country, retired to bed in happy anticipation, and Kowta repaired to the kitchen tent, where, surrounded by the servants, he sat smoking his hookah and relating blood-curdling tales of the doings of the White Tiger.

  Natives seldom sleep till far on in the night, and therefore, the gathering was at its height when the jingle of bells told of the postman's approach, and Kowta, explaining to the company that he was expecting news of his dying grandmother, went out into the moonlight to meet him. The chink-chink of the bunch of bells grew louder, and mingled with the regular grunts of the runner, and Kowta, stepping forward into the sandy path, checked the man's rapid trot.

 

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