Tales from the Dead of Night

by Cecily Gayford

  Charlotte felt the contagion of her whiteness. ‘She knows,’ she thought. She pushed the letter across the table. Her mother-in-law lowered her head over it in silence, but without touching it with her pale wrinkled hands.

  Charlotte stood watching her as she herself, when she had tried to read the letter, had been watched by Mrs Ashby. The latter fumbled for her glasses, held them to her eyes and bent still closer to the outspread page, in order, as it seemed, to avoid touching it. The light of the lamp fell directly on her old face, and Charlotte reflected what depths of the unknown may lurk under the clearest and most candid lineaments. She had never seen her mother-in-law’s features express any but simple and sound emotions – cordiality, amusement, a kindly sympathy; now and again a flash of wholesome anger. Now they seemed to wear a look of fear and hatred, of incredulous dismay and almost cringing defiance. It was as if the spirits warring within her had distorted her face to their own likeness. At length she raised her head. ‘I can’t – I can’t,’ she said in a voice of childish distress.

  ‘You can’t make it out either?’

  She shook her head, and Charlotte saw two tears roll down her cheeks.

  ‘Familiar as the writing is to you?’ Charlotte insisted with twitching lips.

  Mrs Ashby did not take up the challenge. ‘I can make out nothing – nothing.’

  ‘But you do know the writing?’

  Mrs Ashby lifted her head timidly; her anxious eyes stole with a glance of apprehension around the quiet familiar room. ‘How can I tell? I was startled at first …’

  ‘Startled by the resemblance?’

  ‘Well, I thought –’

  ‘You’d better say it out, mother! You knew at once it was her writing?’

  ‘Oh, wait, my dear – wait.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  Mrs Ashby looked up; her eyes, travelling slowly past Charlotte, were lifted to the blank wall behind her son’s writing table.

  Charlotte, following the glance, burst into a shrill laugh of accusation. ‘I needn’t wait any longer! You’ve answered me now! You’re looking straight at the wall where her picture used to hang!’

  Mrs Ashby lifted her hand with a murmur of warning. ‘Sh-h.’

  ‘Oh, you needn’t imagine that anything can ever frighten me again!’ Charlotte cried.

  Her mother-in-law still leaned against the table. Her lips moved plaintively. ‘But we’re going mad – we’re both going mad. We both know such things are impossible.’

  Her daughter-in-law looked at her with a pitying stare. ‘I’ve known for a long time now that everything was possible.’

  ‘Even this?’

  ‘Yes, exactly this.’

  ‘But this letter – after all, there’s nothing in this letter –’

  ‘Perhaps there would be to him. How can I tell? I remember his saying to me once that if you were used to a handwriting the faintest stroke of it became legible. Now I see what he meant. He was used to it.’

  ‘But the few strokes that I can make out are so pale. No one could possibly read that letter.’

  Charlotte laughed again. ‘I suppose everything’s pale about a ghost,’ she said stridently.

  ‘Oh, my child – my child – don’t say it!’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I say it, when even the bare walls cry it out? What difference does it make if her letters are illegible to you and me? If even you can see her face on that blank wall, why shouldn’t he read her writing on this blank paper? Don’t you see that she’s everywhere in this house, and the closer to him because to everyone else she’s become invisible?’ Charlotte dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. A turmoil of sobbing shook her from head to foot. At length a touch on her shoulder made her look up and she saw her mother-in-law bending over her. Mrs Ashby’s face seemed to have grown still smaller and more wasted, but it had resumed its usual quiet look. Through all her tossing anguish, Charlotte felt the impact of that resolute spirit.

  ‘Tomorrow – tomorrow. You’ll see. There’ll be some explanation tomorrow.’

  Charlotte cut her short. ‘An explanation? Who’s going to give it, I wonder?’

  Mrs Ashby drew back and straightened herself heroically. ‘Kenneth himself will,’ she cried out in a strong voice. Charlotte said nothing and the old woman went on: ‘But meanwhile we must act; we must notify the police. Now, without a moment’s delay. We must do everything – everything.’

  Charlotte stood up slowly and stiffly; her joints felt as cramped as an old woman’s. ‘Exactly as if we thought it could do any good to do anything?’

  Resolutely Mrs Ashby cried, ‘Yes!’ and Charlotte went up to the telephone and unhooked the receiver.

  RUDYARD KIPLING

  (1865–1936)

  Rudyard Kipling was born in India; his first memories were of ‘light and colour and golden and purple fruits’ in the Bombay fruit market. Educated in England, he returned to India at the age of sixteen to become ‘fifty per cent of the staff’ of the Civil and Military Gazette in Fort Lahore. He sweated away several intolerable summers in the city, a fever-struck ‘mausoleum of ghosts’ where ‘my world was full of boys but a few years older than I, who … died mostly at the regulation age of twenty-two’. ‘The Phantom ’Rickshaw’, a characteristically clear-eyed view of the claustrophobic Anglo-Indian society in which ‘every circumstance and relation of a man’s life is “public property”’, was written after a promotion to the Allahabad Pioneer. When Kipling decided that London offered greater scope for his literary ambitions, he received some salutary advice with his last pay packet: ‘Take it from me,’ the Pioneer’s managing director confided, ‘you’ll never be worth more than four hundred rupees a month to anyone.’ Kipling noted that ‘at that time I was drawing seven hundred a month’.

  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.

  Globetrotters who expect entertainment as a right have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but nonetheless today, 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 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 disorganised 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 on 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 friends 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 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 nicest 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&O 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 do 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 visit patients and I happened to be within claim. The man would make me most unhappy by describing in a low, even voice the procession of men, women, children and devils 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 style he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterwards 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 orderly 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 Peshawar 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 yourselves.

  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 recognised the fact then, I do not know. Afterwards 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 hate – 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 anyone 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 appeals 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 sickroom, 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.
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  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-panelled ’rickshaw and Mrs Wessington’s down-bowed golden head stood out clearly. She was holding her handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning back 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 15 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 absolutely 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 Comber-mere Bridge and Peliti’s shop.