Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (13 page)

THE DREITARBUND

As a conspiracy it was infamous, and in the hands of unscrupulous men might have been dangerous, seeing how foolish women-folk are.

But, worked with circumspection, as Houligan, Marlowe and Bressil worked it, it secured to three dear sweet girls with money, the right of paying Houligan’s, Marlowe’s and Bressil’s bills for the rest of their days; and, as every one knows, all is fair in love or war. Houligan claimed and was allowed the honour of the Inspiration; Marlowe put fifty rupees into the pool, because he chanced to be the millionaire of the month; Bressil, like Mr Gigadibs, was a ‘literary man’ with no morals but exquisite tact, knowledge of fitting opportunity, which was more than the money or the idea. He was the Napoleon of the Bund, and his contribution was a book, in two volumes, called
Phantasms of the Living,
written by some of the members of the Psychical Research Society. Houligan had an Indian Telegraph Guide, and on this library and the fifty rupees, the Bund opened the campaign. Two men united can do a great deal, but a threefold cord can draw Heaven and Earth together.

The Bund was desperately poor, and, collectively, had not enough good features in it to make up one handsome countenance to go wooing with. It was unlucky in its love-affairs, for it failed to interest young women; and, even when it did, the parents said that it had better work and earn twelve hundred a month before calling again. On occasions like these, the Bund used to smoke vehemently and arrange for a revenge. Houligan’s ambition was to drive over Miss Norris’s father in his dogcart; Marlowe desired to poison Miss Emmett’s mamma; and Bressil, like Job, wished that Miss Yaulton’sbrother-in-law had written a book. But what they wanted most was honourable matrimony with Miss Norris, Miss Emmett and Miss Yaulton. All their angry feelings died away when the Bund was formed, quietly and without ostentation, on strictly practical lines and in thorough accordance with the principles laid down in
Phantasms of the Living –
Vide the chapter on Thought Transference, Brain-waves, Percipients and people of that kind. Houligan said that it was one thing to tell a girl that you were fond of her, when you were by her side, but that it was quite another, and a much more startling thing to prove, that you were fond of her when you were miles away. Once started, at Bressil’s instigation the Bund quarrelled violently and in public, broke up its chummery, and was dead cuts to the great interest of the Station. Everything, even down to the perverted English to be used for the communications, was cut and dried, and there was no further need of personal intercourse. The Bund devoted itself to laying siege to its chosen maidens in a dark and mysterious sort of way that made the latter laugh.

Houligan was transferred to a Station three hundred miles away, and Miss Norris laughed when she said goodbye. The type of Houligan’s love-making has not been made public. Miss Norris said that he used to talk strangely. She held to her opinion till she was attacked by a rather severe fever, after over-exertion at tennis, on a Friday afternoon. Twenty-four hours later, being then in bed, she received a hurried letter from Houligan, explaining that an ‘overmastering presentiment’ – that was the wrong word, but Houligan could never make head or tail
of Phantasms of the Living –
compelled him to write to her and ask if any trouble had overtaken her on Friday evening. He had had a feeling, an idea that she had suddenly fallen ill – had put the feeling from him as absurd, &c, but it had returned, &c. He was her devoted slave, and apologised for thus troubling her. From that date onward, Miss Norris never referred to the strangeness of her lover’s talk. She only wondered; told her parents, who wondered too, and thought a great deal of Houligan. Miss Emmett was of a different type from Miss Norris. She was nervous andhysterical by birth, and Marlowe always thought that her parents might have been won round in time. But another man appeared and began to make love to her – he was a man from the North-West – and the Emmetts were going to spend the summer at Naini Tal. Time and propinquity in a case like Miss Emmett meant everything. By this time, it should be explained, the pool stood at nearly four hundred rupees – the result of monthly contributions. There had been a drain upon it for Houligan’s benefit, in ‘private deferred’wires sketching the daily life of Miss Norris by the words of the Code – a lithographed MS, of seven hundred and thirty-two pages, compiled with extraordinary care. None the less, the pool kept up to an average of four hundred. Marlowe took it all and thrust it into Bressil’s hands, begging him to go to Naini Tal for ten days and draw on the pool if the money ran out. Bressil went when the Emmets moved, and Marlowe had said farewell to Miss Emmett, who was hesitating between her two admirers. Bressil was a genius in his ideas of combinations. After four days, he sent Marlowe a huge telegram, giving him the outlines of the action to take; and then began to beg and beseech Miss Emmett for a dance, at the next ball, which he well knew was a running one, given for the season to Marlowe’s rival. This sort of petition can be renewed at any time and hour, and unless she be bored to death, the petitioner is always pleased. Bressil renewed his request twice in one day. At dinner, his seat faced the door, he said,
Apropos
of nothing in particular, for the third time: – ‘Will you give me number seven. Miss Emmett?’ As he spoke, and as Miss Emmett was bridling, a servant put a telegram on her plate. She read it and began to scream, for the telegram was from Marlowe, and it said: – ‘No. To me and I’ll sit out with you in the spirit.’ Miss Emmett did not go to that dance. She was afraid – afraid of everything, but of Marlowe most of all. He followed up the telegram by a letter, many pages long, and was accepted by return of post. Miss Emmett was nervous and hysterical, but she made a good wife; and her parents were very respectful to Marlowe. They quoted a play called
Ingomar and Parthenia,
and also said that there were ‘morethings in Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of in their philosophy.’

Houligan never had the heart to indulge in another ‘presentiment’. He wooed on his own merits after Miss Norris’s fever; but was accepted chiefly on account of the presentiment. Miss Norris was a healthy young lady, but she was deeply touched by the idea of a man who watched over her from afar. So were her parents. These two couples married, and Bressil was left to make way with Miss Yaulton, who was a most difficult maiden. She believed in ‘missions’, and ‘spheres’, and ‘destinies’, and held that her destiny was to drift away from Bressil and become a ‘woman working for women’ at Home. She was different from the average of Anglo-Indian girls. She said Bressil was a ‘very dear friend’, but she could never marry him; for his work lay in India and hers in England. They met on a high and spiritual platform, which was not what Bressil wanted. Then they parted for no earthly reason, except Miss Yaulton’s ideas; and Bressil was miserable. Houligan and Marlowe had taken their wives Home, and were beginning to be loved for themselves and not for their mediumistic attainments. Bressil assumed that the Dreitarbund was dead. He had helped Houligan and Marlowe to their wives, and Fate had not put them in a position to help him. That was all. The pool was empty and the Codes were lost. All that remained to him was Miss Yaulton’s address. But the Dreitarbund was only suspended for a while. The Houligans met Miss Yaulton at a big country-house in Wiltshire. She had not found her mission or sphere, nor had she forgotten Bressil. There was a riding-party over the downs, and Miss Yaulton, being, as you will have seen by this time, as obstinate as a mule, insisted on riding a big black horse that was not fit for a lady. In consequence, she was bolted with and nearly thrown.

For this reason she announced her intention of riding the brute next morning, though all the house tried to dissuade her.

Houligan was not a clever man, but he fancied that he recognised in this the finger of Providence. He went away to the nearest town – a small one – and paralysed the local telegraph office by pouring in a Foreign Telegram, the like ofwhich had never been seen by the telegraph officials before. He spilt his words like water that nothing should be misunderstood, and paid for repetitions in a princely style. Altogether he spent £15-10 on the telegram, and alluded to many things beside the horse. No one knows what Bressil thought on receipt of it. He may have struggled with himself against the meanness of the trick, or he may not. He delayed several hours in sending his answer. At breakfast next morning in the Wiltshire country-house. Miss Yaulton, booted and habited, received Bressil’s message: – ‘For Heaven’s sake don’t ride
Dandy
.’ She did not. She took the telegram into her own room and recast her ideas on all ‘missions and destinies’ independent of Bressil. She also was awed; but her awe was different from the nervous dread of Miss Emmett, or the frightened bewilderment of Miss Norris. She sent back a three-word telegram to Bressil that drew him to England and then … and then the Dreitarbund really died.

Houligan admits the immorality in the abstract of the work of the Bund. But he says that other Bunds have been much worse, and that ‘if the Psychical Research Society pops a good notion into your head, why on earth shouldn’t you work it out?’

BUBBLING WELL ROAD

Look out on a large scale map the place where the Chenab river falls into the Indus fifteen miles or so above the hamlet of Chachuran. Five miles west of Chachuran lives Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the
gosain
or priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road, but it is no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story.

Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that turns over in silver when the wind blows, from ten to twenty feet high and from three to four miles square. In the heart of the patch hides the
gosain
of Bubbling Well Road. The villagers stone him when he peers into the daylight, although he is a priest, and he runs back again as a strayed wolf turns into tall crops. He is a one-eyed man and carries, burnt between his brows, the impress of two copper coins. Some say that he was tortured by a native prince in the old days; for he is so old that he must have been capable of mischief in the days of Runjit Singh. His most pressing need at present is a halter, and the care of the British Government.

These things happened when the jungle-grass was tall; and the villagers of Chachuran told me that a sounder of pig had gone into the Arti-goth patch. To enter jungle-grass is always an unwise proceeding, but I went, partly because I knew nothing of pig-hunting, and partly because the villagers said that the big boar of the sounder owned foot long tushes. Therefore I wished to shoot him, in order to produce the tushes in after years, and say that I had ridden him down in fair chase. I took a gun and went into the hot, close patch, believing that it would be an easy thing to unearth one pig in ten square miles of jungle. Mr Wardle, the terrier, went with mebecause he believed that I was incapable of existing for an hour without his advice and countenance. He managed to slip in and out between the grass clumps, but I had to force my way, and in twenty minutes was as completely lost as though I had been in the heart of Central Africa. I did not notice this at first till I had grown wearied of stumbling and pushing through the grass, and Mr Wardle was beginning to sit down very often and hang out his tongue very far. There was nothing but grass everywhere, and it was impossible to see two yards in any direction. The grass stems held the heat exactly as boiler-tubes do.

In half an hour, when I was devoutly wishing that I had left the big boar alone, I came to a narrow path which seemed to be a compromise between a native foot-path and a pig-run. It was barely six inches wide, but I could sidle along it in comfort. The grass was extremely thick here, and where the path was ill defined it was necessary to crush into the tussocks either with both hands before the face, or to back into it, leaving both hands free to manage the rifle. None the less it was a path, and valuable because it might lead to a place.

At the end of nearly fifty yards of fair way, just when I was preparing to back into an unusually stiff tussock, I missed Mr Wardle, who for his girth is an unusually frivolous dog and never keeps to heel. I called him three times and said aloud, ‘Where has the little beast gone to?’ Then I stepped backwards several paces, for almost under my feet a deep voice repeated, ‘Where has the little beast gone?’ To appreciate an unseen voice thoroughly you should hear it when you are lost in stifling jungle grass. I called Mr Wardle again and the underground echo assisted me. At that I ceased calling and listened very attentively, because I thought I heard a man laughing in a peculiarly offensive manner. The heat made me sweat, but the laughter made me shake. There is no earthly need for laughter in high grass. It is indecent, as well as impolite. The chuckling stopped, and I took courage and continued to call till I thought that I had located the echo somewhere behind and below the tussock into which I was preparing to back just before I lost Mr Wardle. I drove my rifle up to the triggers between thegrass-stems in a downward and forward direction. Then I waggled it to and fro, but it did not seem to touch ground on the far side of the tussock as it should have done. Every time that I grunted with the exertion of driving a heavy rifle through thick grass, the grunt was faithfully repeated from below, and when I stopped to wipe my face the sound of low laughter was distinct beyond doubting.

I went into the tussock, face first, an inch at a time, my mouth open and my eyes fine, full, and prominent. When I had overcome the resistance of the grass I found that I was looking straight across a black gap in the ground. That I was actually lying on my chest leaning over the mouth of a well so deep I could scarcely see the water in it.

There were things in the water, – black things, – and the water was as black as pitch with blue scum atop. The laughing sound came from the noise of a little spring, spouting halfway down one side of the well. Sometimes as the black things circled round, the trickle from the spring fell upon their tightly-stretched skins, and then the laughter changed into a sputter of mirth. One thing turned over on its back, as I watched,and drifted round and round the circle of the mossy brickwork with a hand and half an arm held clear of the water in a stiff and horrible flourish, as though it were a very wearied guide paid to exhibit the beauties of the place.

I did not spend more than half-an-hour in creeping round that well and finding the path on the other side. The remainder of the journey I accomplished by feeling every foot of ground in front of me, and crawling like a snail through every tussock. I carried Mr Wardle in my arms and he licked my nose. He was not frightened in the least, nor was I, but we wished to reach open ground in order to enjoy the view. My knees were loose, and the apple in my throat refused to slide up and down. The path on the far side of the well was a very good one, though boxed in on all sides by grass, and it led me in time to a priest’s hut in the centre of a little clearing. When that priest saw my very white face coming through the grass he howled with terror and embraced my boots; but when I reached the bedstead set outside his door I sat down quicklyand Mr Wardle mounted guard over me. I was not in a condition to take care of myself.

When I awoke I told the priest to lead me into the open, out of the Arti-goth patch and to walk slowly in front of me. Mr Wardle hates natives, and the priest was more afraid of Mr Wardle than of me, though we were both angry. He walked very slowly down a narrow little path from his hut. That path crossed three paths, such as the one I had come by in the first instance, and every one of the three headed towards the Bubbling Well. Once when we stopped to draw breath, I heard the Well laughing to itself alone in the thick grass, and only my need for his services prevented my firing both barrels into the priest’s back.

When we came to the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went to the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to see the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot.

The villagers told me that the patch of grass was full of devils and ghosts, all in the service of the priest, and that men and women and children had entered it and had never returned. They said the priest used their livers for purposes of witchcraft. When I asked why they had not told me of this at the outset, they said that they were afraid they would lose their reward for bringing news of the pig.

Before I left I did my best to set the patch alight, but the grass was too green. Some fine summer day, however, if the wind is favourable, a file of old newspapers and a box of matches will make clear the mystery of Bubbling Well Road.