Summons' from dead wife
Not though you did to-night, TO Sweet, and wail.
A spectre at my door, Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail
I shall but löve you more, Who, from Deaths house returning give me still
One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
This tale may be explained by those who know how soul are made, and where the bounds of the possible are put down. I have lived long enough in India to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only write the story as it happened.
Dumoise was our civil surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse", because he was a round, sleepy, little man. He was a good director and never quarrelled with anyone, not even with our deputy commissioner who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. He married a girl as round and as sleepy-looking as himself. "She was a Miss Hillardyce, daughter of "squash" Hillardyce of the Berars, who married his chief's daughter by mistake. But that is another story.
A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long but there is nothing to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years. India is a delightful country for married folk who are wrapped up in one another. They can be alone and without interrupriest just the t did There pro little people retired from the world after their Mintforne and were very happy. They were forced, of ers, occasional dinners, but they made no friends hetty and the station went its own way atid forgot them, fly song accasionally, that Dutmoise was the beer of yod fellom,tn dall. A civil surgeon who never quattels is a tatity, asrte as such.
Few people can afford to pay Rohinon Care anywhere least of all in India, where we are few in the land and very much dependent on each other's kind offices. Dumee w songs shutting himself from the world for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid woke in this season in the heart of the cold weather, and his wife went down He was a shy little man, and five days were wasted seiere he texto that Mrs. Dumoise was brutning with something worse than simple fever, and three days more passed before he ventured to call on Mrs. Shute, the engineer's wife, and timidly speik shen his trouble.
Nearly every household in India knows that de tots te very helpless in typhoid. The battle must be fought out between death and the nurses minute by minute and degree by degree Mrs. Shure almost boxed Mouse's ears for what she called his "criminal delay, and went off at once to look after the poot girl. We had seven cases of typhoid in the station that winter and, as the average of death is about one in every five cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose somebody But all did their best. The women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned to and tended the bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and brought them through the valley of the shadow it triumph. But, just when we thought all was over, and were going to give a dance to celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died in a week, and the station went to the funeral. Dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to be taken away
After the death, Dumoise crept into his own house and refused to be comforted. He did his duties perfectly but we all felt that he should go on leave, and the other men of his own service told him so. Dumoise was very thankful for the suggestion he was thankful for anything in those days and went to Chini on a walking tour. Chini is some twenty marches from Simla, in the heart of the hills, and the scenery is good if you are in trouble. You pass through big, still deodar forests and under big, still diffs, and over big, still grass-downs swelling like a woman's breasts; and the wind across the grass, and the rain among the deodars say "hush hush hush ". So little Dumoise was packed off to Chini, to wear down his grief with a full-plate camera and a rifle. He rook also a useless bearer, because the man had been his wife's favourite servant. He was idle and a thief, bur Dumoise entrusted everything to him
On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned aside to Bag. through the forest reserve which is on the spur of Mount Hutton. Some men who have travelled more than a little say that the march from Kotegarh to Bagi is one of the finest in creation. It runs through dark wet forest, and ends suddenly in bleak, nipped hillside and black rocks. Bagi dak-bangalow is open to all the winds and is bitterly cold. Few people go to Bagi. Perhaps that was the reason why Dumoise went there. He halted at seven in the evening, and his bearer went down the hillside to the village to engage coolies for the next day's march.
The sun had set, and the night-winds were beginning to croon among the rocks. Dumoise learned on the railing of the verandah, waiting for his bearer to return. The man came back almost immediately after he had disappeared, and at such a rate that Dumoise fancied he must have crossed a bear. He was running as hard as he could up the face of the hill. But there
was no bear to account for his terrorifered to the variate mnd fell down the blood spurting from his nose and his fice iron grey. Then he gurgled "I have seen the memsahib have seen the memsahib"
"Where?" said Dumoise,
"Down there, walking on the road to the village, She was in a blue dress, and she lifted the veil of her bonnet and said Ram Dass, give my teams to the sahib, and tell him that! shall meet him next month at Nuddea. Then I ran away, because I was afraid,"
What Dumoise said or did I do not know Ram Dass dedates that he said nothing, but walked up and down the verandah all the cold night, waiting for the memsahib to come up the hill, and stretching out his arms into the dark like a madman. But no memsahib came, and, next day, he went on to Simla cross questioning the bearer every hour,
Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. Dumoise, and that she had lifted up her veil and given him the message which he had faithfully repeated to Dumoise. To this statement Ram Dass adhered. He did not know where Buddha was, had no friends at Nuddea, and would most certainly never go to Nuddea, even though his pay were doubled.
Nuddea is in Bengal, and has nothing whatever to do with a doctor serving in Punjab. It must be more than twelve hundred miles south of Meridki.
Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and returned to Meridki to take over charge from the man who had been officiating for him during his tour. There were some dispensary accounts to be explained, and some recent orders of the surgeon general to be noted, and, altogether, the taking over was a full day's work. In the evening, Dumoise told his locum tenens, who was an old friend of his bachelor days, what had happened at Bagi, and the man said that Ram Dass might as well have chosen Tuticorin while he was about it.
At that moment a telegraph-peon came in with a from Simla, ordering Dumoise not to take over telegram 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 short-handed, as usual, had borrowed surgeon from Punjab,
Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said "Well?"
The other doctor said nothing. Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed through Simla on his way from Bagi and thus might possibly have heard first news of the impending transfer. He tried to put the question and the implicd 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 Dass entered with the lamps.
"Where is the sahib going?” he asked.
"To Nuddca", said Dumoise softly.
Ram Dass clawed Dumoise's knees and boots and begged him not to go. Ram Dass 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 sec 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 good-bye as one under sentence of death.
Eleven days later, he had joined hi 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 bangalow.