Part 39 (2/2)

As we drove up, the dresser--pallid of face, but full of a vast importance--rushed out from a small hut which had been erected inside.

”Many, many thanks to Supreme Almighty,” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; then added, with distinct complacency, ”you will find all things necessarily in order, sir. Segregationalism is being much carried out. Patient having pa.s.sed through p--neumonic deliriums is now comatic and in _articulo mortis_.”

I followed the doctor, who looked, as well he might, completely bewildered.

The dispensary was cleared out: saucers of disinfectants positively littered the ground. White sheets saturated with the same hung at every door; the smell of them stank in the nostrils, and, as I followed, a dank disagreeable wet flap from one of them on my cheek made me s.h.i.+ver; but the sight which met my eyes in the central room set me literally shaking with laughter. It was so inexpressibly comic.

Propped high on pillows, his face placid, composed, lay Job Charnock, snoring contentedly, while an empty brandy bottle beside him on the bed showed one cause at least of his somnolence. There he lay, peaceful as a baby, while the doctor, frowning at my inopportune laughter, turned angrily to the dresser.

”You cursed fool! The man's drunk. What the deuce do you mean by being such an a.s.s.” Then the comic side of the situation took him also, and he joined me in my merriment.

”By Jove,” he chortled, ”Segregation has done it this time.”

There was no use attempting to awaken him for the moment, so the doctor turned on the dresser again. How had it come about? How had he allowed himself to be so imposed upon?

It was quite simple, even when clothed in the babu's best ”middel-fail”

English.

Segregation had come, had seen, had conquered. He had declared himself sick of the plague, and defied the dresser to deny it. He had thereupon taken possession of the dispensary, ordered the erection of the temporary sheds by enforced labour, cleared out the patients, used up all the disinfectants, and had then, but not till then, taken to his bed and drunk all the brandy! So ”cometic symptoms supervening, and supplies of brandy exhausting,” the dresser had appealed ”through authentic sources for aid of the Almighty.”

”Anyway, by Jove!” said the doctor, as he noted all the arrangements, ”I couldn't have done it better myself. He has even”--he pointed to a row of men, evidently of the semi-savage Sansiya race, who were squatting in front of the village accountant's house--”set them to killing rats!”

And, in truth, each of these hardy hunters, bore a bamboo on which were strung the dead bodies of many rodents, young and old. Undoubtedly Job Charnock had a genius for organisation; and, with a mournful prescience of what would be the answer, I asked the nearest Sansi what he was to get for his rats.

It was half the Government rate: but the broad grin on the man's face showed him satisfied. Yes! Job Charnock had the gift of the Empire-builder!

”Look here!” I said to the doctor, ”that man hasn't committed an indictable offence. He diagnosed his complaint as plague--that is not indictable; he went to your Department for advice and got confirmation of his suspicions; that was not his fault; and all he's done since then, is what _ought_ to have been done under the circ.u.mstances.”

”Except the brandy,” expostulated the doctor. ”Brandy is not in the dietary for plague, and he's drunk up the year's supply! That amounts to stealing.”

”Pardon me! You can have the dresser up for misuse of supplies, if you like,” I said stoutly, ”but every drop of that brandy was drunk out of one of your blessed measuring gla.s.ses.” I pointed to the inverted crystal cone with cabalistic signs on it which lay beside the bottle.

”He couldn't have taken more than an ounce at a time, and that to a man of his habits is strictly a medicinal dose, and for that your dresser is responsible. No! send him in to me when he sobers. I'll settle him up.”

I did so to the best of my ability, but there was no question that Job Charnock was, as the doctor had said, ”a bit looney” at times, especially when he had any drink on board, though no one could have called him a habitual drunkard. Still, there was little use in getting him employment. He always drifted out of it again. Then, for a while, he would disappear, only to return after a few months with his usual, ”I don't want to do no 'arm to anyone. I wants to be seggergated, for I've got the plague, so 'elp me Gawd I 'ave.” He was always, then, at the last point of dest.i.tution; more than once even the ”_hart banner_”

for the _ticca ghari_ was not his, and he would come skulking into the office almost starving and barefoot. For he looked on me as a friend in need; and, indeed, I used sometimes to wonder if hunger were not as much responsible for the recurrence of his delusion as drink.

Then I was transferred to Rajputana, and apparently left Job Charnock behind me, until one hot weather morning when, in order to catch a train, I was galloping across a short cut of the wild Bar land which lay between the railway and the out-of-the-way-place where I was stationed. It is a strange desert, this Bar land, of wild caper bushes, stunted _jund_ trees, and hard resilient limestone soil, baked by the sun to whiteness. A horse's hoofs resounds over it for miles, but a man, if he left visible path, might, without the aid of the sun, lose his way in it almost any moment. Even I had to glance at the whereabouts of that luminary when a few moment's abstraction caused me to divert my eye from the faint traces of previous pa.s.sages which was all there was of path.

As I did so, my eye was caught by something curious in the gnarled branches of a _jund_ tree some fifty yards further away. It looked like a red cross. Instinctively I rode towards it. It was a red cross. Two strips of red Turkey cotton had been carefully tied crosswise between the branches. What did it mean? And why had that shallow trench--a mere sc.r.a.ping on the hard soil--been traced between that tree and the next!

And--yes!--that was another red cross in its branches also! I rode on only to find that here again the trench trended at right angles towards a further tree where yet another red cross showed.

The grey, green, leafless triangle of caper bushes, all set with tiny coral bud-flowers, had so far prevented my seeing anything within the traced square; but now I came upon a definite opening. Across it, however, from bush to bush, stretched a pair of men's braces, and pinned to this was a bit of paper on which something was written in what looked suspiciously like blood.

I jumped off my horse and bent to look at it. Though written in large characters it was barely decipherable, and seemed to have been drawn with difficulty by a pointed stick. This much I could read:

”_Tresp.u.s.s.ers will be persecuted_

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