Part 96 (2/2)
At that moment a telegraph-peon came in with a telegram from Simla, ordering Dumoise not to take over charge at Meridki, but to go at once to Nuddea on special duty. There was a nasty outbreak of cholera at Nuddea, and the Bengal Government, being shorthanded, as usual, had borrowed a Surgeon from the Punjab.
Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said:--”Well?”
The other Doctor said nothing. It was all that he could say.
Then he remembered that Dumoise had pa.s.sed through Simla on his way from Bagi; and thus might, possibly, have heard the first news of the impending transfer.
He tried to put the question, and the implied suspicion into words, but Dumoise stopped him with:--”If I had desired THAT, I should never have come back from Chini. I was shooting there. I wish to live, for I have things to do.... but I shall not be sorry.”
The other man bowed his head, and helped, in the twilight, to pack up Dumoise's just opened trunks. Ram Da.s.s entered with the lamps.
”Where is the Sahib going?” he asked.
”To Nuddea,” said Dumoise, softly.
Ram Da.s.s clawed Dumoise's knees and boots and begged him not to go.
Ram Da.s.s wept and howled till he was turned out of the room. Then he wrapped up all his belongings and came back to ask for a character.
He was not going to Nuddea to see his Sahib die, and, perhaps to die himself.
So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went down to Nuddea alone; the other Doctor bidding him goodbye as one under sentence of death.
Eleven days later, he had joined his Memsahib; and the Bengal Government had to borrow a fresh Doctor to cope with that epidemic at Nuddea. The first importation lay dead in Chooadanga Dak-Bungalow.
TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE.
By the hoof of the Wild Goat up-tossed From the Cliff where She lay in the Sun, Fell the Stone To the Tarn where the daylight is lost; So She fell from the light of the Sun, And alone.
Now the fall was ordained from the first, With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn, But the Stone Knows only Her life is accursed, As She sinks in the depths of the Tarn, And alone.
Oh, Thou who has builded the world, Oh, Thou who hast lighted the Sun!
Oh, Thou who hast darkened the Tarn!
Judge Thou The Sin of the Stone that was hurled By the Goat from the light of the Sun, As She sinks in the mire of the Tarn, Even now--even now--even now!
--From the Unpublished Papers of McIntosh Jellaludin.
”Say, is it dawn, is it dusk in thy Bower, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh be it night--be it--”
Here he fell over a little camel-colt that was sleeping in the Serai where the horse-traders and the best of the blackguards from Central Asia live; and, because he was very drunk indeed and the night was dark, he could not rise again till I helped him. That was the beginning of my acquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin. When a loafer, and drunk, sings The Song of the Bower, he must be worth cultivating. He got off the camel's back and said, rather thickly:--”I--I--I'm a bit screwed, but a dip in Loggerhead will put me right again; and I say, have you spoken to Symonds about the mare's knees?”
Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away from us, close to Mesopotamia, where you mustn't fish and poaching is impossible, and Charley Symonds' stable a half mile further across the paddocks. It was strange to hear all the old names, on a May night, among the horses and camels of the Sultan Caravanserai. Then the man seemed to remember himself and sober down at the same time. He leaned against the camel and pointed to a corner of the Serai where a lamp was burning:--
”I live there,” said he, ”and I should be extremely obliged if you would be good enough to help my mutinous feet thither; for I am more than usually drunk--most--most phenomenally tight. But not in respect to my head. 'My brain cries out against'--how does it go? But my head rides on the--rolls on the dung-hill I should have said, and controls the qualm.”
I helped him through the gangs of tethered horses and he collapsed on the edge of the verandah in front of the line of native quarters.
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