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The Phantom 'Rickshaw, and Other Ghost Stories

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Title: The Phantom 'Rickshaw, and Other Ghost Stories

Author: Rudyard Kipling

 
Release date: September 1, 2001 [eBook #2806]
 Most recently updated: October 7, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2806

Credits: Produced by David Reed, and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW, AND OTHER GHOST STORIES ***

Produced by David Reed

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW AND OTHER GHOST STORIES

By Rudyard Kipling

 * * * * *

 The Phantom 'Rickshaw
 My Own True Ghost Story
 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
 The Man Who Would Be King
 "The Finest Story in The World"

 * * * * *

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.

Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right, have, even within my
memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less to-day, 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, 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 disorganized 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 in 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 friend 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 always 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 dearest 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 take 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 patients, and I happened to be within
claim. The man would make me most unhappy by describing in a low, even
voice, the procession 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 diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward
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 messenger 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 Peshawur 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 ju

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