A Good Soldier

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  He saw a wraith among the trees bordering the road on the side where he was walking: a diaphanous form that flitted among the foliage, luminous and insubstantial. For a moment he saw it clearly: the shape of a young girl, her sari drawn modestly across her face, her anguished eyes wide in terror.

  She stumbled and he looked down at her feet.

  His senses floundered and his ears were filled with a booming as though clamped between a pair of giant sea shells. He felt as if his skull were being compressed. The stars had gone and the night was impenetrably black. His feet were leaden and would not move. His legs were numb. He pitched forward and his outstretched hands met the hard, dusty surface of the road. He felt the impact jar his elbows as his body collapsed onto the ground, in the second or two before he lost consciousness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ruth lay awake thinking that Hugh Ramsey did not fit into any category in which she could place him. Perhaps there were some categories peculiar to the British which she had not encountered yet. Perhaps there were special categories of Englishmen one met only in India and she did not know this country well enough to be able to identify his.

  She doubted, however, that the uncertainty — confusion? she wondered — that she felt about him had its essential cause in his being English or in the Indian environment. If she had met him in Boston or out West he would still have been an enigma. She felt attracted to him... she modified that... she admitted only that she found him likeable... because he was... At that point she hesitated again. He was certainly good-looking and it was easier to like a handsome person than an ugly one, whatever folks said about looks not being everything. They also said that money wasn’t important and she was old enough already to know the falsity of that statement. The family had had some hard times on the prairies and knew the value of money.

  Hugh Ramsey was handsome, dashing, charming. All superficial qualities, she thought crossly: cross with herself for being impressed — enticed? — by them. She enjoyed listening to his voice. She found him intelligent and amusing. Experience, she reflected, tempered intuition. Her intuition suggested that he was a decent man. So why was she looking for something discordant? Self-inflicted irritation was silly and pointless. He was kind: he had been genuinely concerned about her mother and her on that frightening morning when the crazy horse had broken out on the rampage. He had protected them as much as he could from distress over the death of their sais. She had felt some irritation then: they had suffered worse events and uglier sights at the hands of the Sioux.

  Life, she decided, was a succession of adjustments to the confines of a constantly changing structure. That did not help, however, or compensate for, her present sense of unfulfilment; and loneliness: which was absurd, for she was never alone. Damn, she thought. It was not a word she used in speech but it relieved her feelings in silent communion with herself. Damn it. She searched her mind for things in Hugh Ramsey which she could legitimately dislike and it added to her chagrin that she could not in honesty think of any: except that he was an Englishman and it was only 43 years, well within her father’s lifetime, since her country had fought its way free of British dominion. That hardly seemed a sufficient reason for taking against this pleasant young man.

  There was, of course, the military stamp to which to take exception: an assumption of command, an arrogant way of carrying himself. She had known frontiersmen who had the same outward characteristics and the same authoritative manner, and she had admired rather than resented them. She was used to men looking at her with frank admiration, but when she saw it in his eyes it had made her defensive. She was not getting much comfort from her thoughts.

  Admit it, my girl, you’re nettled because he didn’t pay you much attention this evening. He had concerned himself mostly with her parents and she had been inclined to sulk: like an adolescent being patronised. He had at least taken enough notice to compliment her on how much Hindustani she had learned already. But then, he had extended the same praise to her mother and father.

  Jackals. How she hated them. Every night since they had left Bombay she had had to listen to their howling. That first night on the road here their shrill demented call had frightened her more than the tiger’s roar or the wolves’ baying. Its pitch grated on the nerves and pierced the eardrums like a skewer. Wherever they made camp, jackals had approached in the darkness to within a stone’s-throw of it. Here in Nekshahr they prowled the roads and came scavenging in the compounds of the houses.

  She recalled the terrifying night in the big deserted bungalow at Mirgaganj. That eerie yelping had been part of the turmoil and shock; and now it reminded her of the wild notes of the ghostly fiddle, the icy breeze that had swept through the room, the paralysis of terror that had momentarily distorted her senses.

  Ruth listened to the jackals and thought there must be a large pack of them roving the roads and gardens tonight. She became drowsy at last and her thoughts became confused: her random rationalising of Ramsey’s impact on her feelings; the insensate howling around the house; an inchoate uneasiness that abruptly grew into an alarm that brought her wide awake. She sat up and stared into the darkness, looking for some intrusion more substantial than mere sound. But there was nothing there. The pankha swished and creaked, the chaukidar cleared his throat, the jackals kept up their dirge. In the garden the owl that lived in a tree by the gate hooted loudly and was answered by another.

  She settled down to sleep, smiling to herself in the darkness at the thought that if some vague threat erupted into real danger Hugh Ramsey was only a few minutes away and he would know what to do.

  *

  Ramsey felt himself being lifted. He tried to open his eyes but the lids resisted all effort. It was not so much that they felt too heavy for his facial muscles to command as that he was pervaded by such a lassitude as he had never known: not even when in the grip of fever or immediately after being wounded.

  He heard Sher Mahommed Khan’s voice. “Help me settle the Sahib comfortably on my shoulder, brother.”

  And Karim Baksh: “Will not the Sahib be more comfortable if I help to carry him?”

  “I need no help for that.”

  He recognised other voices: cook, pankha quli, night watchman, sais; even the sweeper and the gardener.

  There was one voice he did not recognise. It spoke only once and briefly, quietly, a murmur.

  He felt himself being carried and was aware of the servants chattering in low tones. He heard Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh tell them to keep quiet. Presently he knew that he was being put down on his bed.

  With the partial return of consciousness came a wave of revulsion as he saw again foggily in his mind’s eye the drifting shape of a young woman which had preceded the abrupt loss of his senses. In the instant after he had seen her he had collapsed into oblivion as though he had been clubbed on the head. But there was no sensation of violence, only a sudden, all-obliterating drop into unaccountable insensibility.

  The persistent image his memory had recalled made him begin to struggle. He opened his eyes and tried to move his limbs vigorously, but he felt as though they were bound. He succeeded only in raising his head a few inches from the pillow: the horrid impression had gone and in its place he saw familiar faces.

  One of these emerged from the shadows beyond the range of the oil lamp burning beside his bed, as he felt Sher Mahommed Khan’s arm supporting him. But this man who was coming silently towards him was a stranger, although a familiar sight. What was the Sadhu doing here?

  Sher Mahommed Khan leaned over him. “What happened, Sahib? The Sadhu saw you fall and tried to raise you, but had not the strength. He came running to rouse me.”

  “I know not.” To Ramsey his own voice rang loudly and eccentrically in his ears, a plangent jumbled dissonance, although he felt so feeble that he thought he must be barely audible.

  The Sadhu spoke and Ramsey looked away from Sher Mahommed Khan and from Karim Baksh who also leaned over him with concern, and met the Sadhu�
��s eyes. They were looking into his with an intensity of concentration, their pupils shrunk to the size of the black dots on a dice, that slowly brought rigidity creeping over his arms, his legs and his neck.

  The Sadhu said, slowly, “Did the Sahib also see the chural, perhaps?”

  There was a concerted yelp from the three women who had crept behind their menfolk, the wives of the cook, the gardener and the sais. Their Hindu husbands muttered in alarm. Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh growled with disdain but also with an underlying uneasiness.

  A chural was the ghost of a young woman who had died in childbirth, come to haunt all men and mortify their consciences with vicarious guilt: women were the victims of men’s selfish pleasure, the chural implied. Anyone who succumbed to her beckoning gestures and spoke to her fell dead. Merely to see her presaged imminent death. Churals were instantly recognisable: not from their beauty or their enticing gestures; but because their feet were turned back to front.

  The most malignant spectres were those of women who died while giving birth during the diwali festival.

  By now the Sadhu was at Ramsey’s bedside, his eyes still staring steadily into his. He repeated his question. “Did the Sahib also see the chural, perhaps? The wife of the Nawab’s last Chamberlain died in this house giving birth to a stillborn child and the proper rites were not carried out, although it was the time of Diwali.”

  “Rites... ri... ri... ites... Diwali... wali... wali... li...”

  The words, fragmented, reverberated tinnily in Ramsey’s ears, like a cry in a huge, empty room. He fell back against the pillows, a dead weight on Sher Mahommed Khan’s arm, rigid as though he were in a convulsion.

  The loathsome rites which alone could immunise the dead from being turned into a chural passed through his hazy mind in repulsive images. The round headed nails driven into the finger nails, the thumbs and big toes joined by iron rings. The surface of the earth where she had lain, sown with mustard seed: so that when the plants grew in the spirit world their scent would keep her content enough; or, if she stooped to pick them, she would be delayed until daylight: in which a chural can exercise no evil influence.

  He knew the Hindus’ superstitions and their customs and he saw the succession of pictures in his mind’s eye with disgust. But he could neither speak nor move nor keep his eyes open.

  Sweat formed on the Sadhu’s face with the effort of will he had been forced to exert. This Englishman possessed uncommon strength of will and resistance, he was thinking. He did not succumb readily, even though he had fallen senseless at that earlier critical moment when he had summoned all his powers.

  *

  Sher Mahommed Khan would not leave Ramsey’s side. He sent Karim Baksh to the Whittakers. Husain Ahmed, still working as their bearer, reported his presence as soon as Henry Whittaker woke. Whittaker went out to the front veranda at once. His wife went to fetch Ruth and they both joined him. They found him looking puzzled and sounding impatient. He had to cope with Hindustani on his own: Mukerji had returned to Calcutta.

  “Blast it, I can’t quite get the hang of this. Karim Baksh keeps saying something about ‘bhut’ and ‘chural’.” Mukerji’s lessons had not covered the subject of ghosts or of young wives dying in childbirth. “He’s also saying some Sadhu — presumably the guy we see under the tree near Hugh’s house — saved his life. It seems Sher Mahommed Khan has sent for Dr. Bond, who should be there by now.”

  “Let’s hurry over and see if we can help.” Constance put an arm about her daughter and they hastened off.

  Women’s toilet, even when hasty, was never quickly done. Respectable ladies spent no time on powder and paint, but the number and complexity of their garments, even in the Tropics, was awesome. Men, whose shaving was a laborious affair with an open razor, could scarcely be swifter. Although Henry Whittaker wore a beard and moustache it was almost more difficult to manoeuvre a blade around these, to keep his cheeks pristine, than to make a clean sweep of the lot. It was thus over half an hour before the carriage drew up at Ramsey’s bungalow.

  For Ruth the past thirty-odd minutes had been the most strained of her life with the exception of the two occasions of her brothers’ murder by the Sioux. She could see that Karim Baksh was a man of good sense and calm nerve. She knew he was battle-hardened and not readily frightened. The fear that haunted his eyes despite his carefully controlled manner of speaking was, therefore, the cause of grave concern in her. She and her parents had not understood perfectly all that he had told them: but what they did grasp was enough. Hugh Ramsey had had some sort of accident and was unconscious. “He does not move nor speak nor open his eyes”, was what Karim Baksh had told them. He had spoken of the Sadhu as Hugh’s rescuer but she had observed the expression he fleetingly wore when he did so and it had given her a shiver. She always had a cold tremor when she saw one of those naked or scantily loinclothed contemplatives. They brought back all her worst impressions of this country.

  She felt angry at her helplessness when she stood by Hugh’s bed with her parents. His face did not bear the passive look she had seen on the faces even of those who had been killed in Indian raids or who had fainted from their wounds. It looked as though some struggle were going on within him, a fight to regain his faculties; and to resist an even deeper unconsciousness. Compassion and great tenderness came over her.

  Dr. Bond, dapper, grey-haired, usually benign but grave-faced now, had been sponging him. As fast as he did so and mopped Ramsey’s face and chest dry, they shone anew with sweat despite the brisk swing of the pankha.

  “I have bled him. If you ladies — with your permission, Whittaker — would be good enough to continue the sponging, I shall return to my surgery to prepare a specific which I believe will bring the patient back to full consciousness and break his fever.”

  “Why, of course. The poor boy. What exactly happened, Doctor? We’ve heard something from Hugh’s bearer, but we couldn’t fully understand what he was saying.” Constance took the sponge from the doctor while she spoke and began to apply it to Ramsey’s heated face and torso.

  “They say he saw a ghost...”

  “Oh, really!” Ruth was exasperated.

  In his mild way Dr. Bond explained the superstition about chural and that the Sadhu claimed also to have seen the ghost which portended death. Ruth’s look of annoyance grew with the telling. “You don’t believe any of that rubbish, do you, Doctor?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “What do you think is the matter with Hugh?” Whittaker asked. “He seemed in good health when he dined with us last evening.”

  “A distemper of the blood brought about by a general disorder of the system. Ramsey has suffered troublesome times in the past few months. These matters prey on a man’s mind. Anxiety and... and shame...”

  “I won’t have that! Hugh has nothing to be ashamed of.” Ruth’s parents looked at her with surprise. Her face had become flushed.

  “Of course not.” Dr. Bond was unfailingly tactful. “But his regiment... what happened was an undeniable disgrace...”

  “Not to Hugh personally, surely?” said Whittaker.

  “Nevertheless, he has carried a burden of...” Dr. Bond smiled. “If I say ‘guilt’, I shall again incur this young lady’s displeasure. I hope I may say ‘dishonour’ without being taken amiss.” He saw Ruth prepare to speak and went on hastily: “Not personal dishonour, of course, but the sepoys’ whom he commanded.”

  “What has all that to do with his being so ill now?” asked Constance.

  “Concern for the reputation of his late regiment is, I believe, a direct contributor to the state we see him in now. It has had a lowering effect on him. In this climate we are all prey to an abundance of ills; and there are insidious diseases in the very air we breathe here which are as virulent as... as snakebite.”

  “Goodness! You don’t think he was bitten by a snake as he walked home in the dark?” Ruth had turned from an indignant pink to a frightened pallor.

  “No
, my dear young lady. He would not have survived all these hours if he had been bitten by any of the varieties that abound here.”

  “Do you think some germ has entered his body? Some infection that causes fever?” Whittaker asked.

  “I believe so, and I believe that, as I explained, his blood was already over-heated by a long period of anxiety. You have heard, no doubt, that even on the journey here from Calcutta he twice nearly lost his life: once at the hands of river pirates and then of a band of Thugs.”

  “I am sure,” Ruth said, “that as a soldier he is well used to a great deal worse. In fact he probably enjoys a good fight.”

  Dr. Bond thought it wise not to prolong the argument. “I must not linger here. I shall be back directly with a suitable draught.”

  When he was out of earshot, Ruth said “We should take him home with us so we can look after him day and night.”

  “Perhaps Dr. Bond will not allow him to be moved.”

  “He could be carried to our house in a palanquin, Mother.”

  “Your mother is right, Ruth.” Whittaker thought his daughter’s suggestion reasonable but on principle he supported his wife. “Even in a palki it could be dangerous to move him. You and Mother can visit here...”

  “He needs constant nursing, Father.”

  “I believe Dr. Bond’s wife and daughters are capable of that. They are certainly more experienced at”

  Ruth sniffed. She had a poor opinion of all the Englishwomen in Nekshahr; with the possible exception of the ebullient Mrs. Owthwaite, whose robust directness amused her. The Resident’s wife was a gorgon and his daughters pale, acicular indoor creatures. Dr. Bond’s family were kinder and more friendly, but she did not think any of them would have survived three years in the wild West.

  “But Hugh didn’t save their lives, Father.”

  “Yes, I know we are in his debt. Let us see what the doctor has to say. Perhaps the medicine will have its effect in a few hours.”