Speaker 1: By word of mouth by Rudyard Kipling. Not though you
die to night, oh sweet and wail a specter at
my door, shall mortal fear make love immortal fail? I
shall but love you more, who, from death's arms returning,
give me still one moment's comfort in my matchless ill
shadow houses. This tale may be explained by those who
know how souls are made and where the bounds of
the possible are put down. I have lived long enough
in this country to know that it is best to
know nothing, and can only write the story as it happened.
Demoise was our civil surgeon at Meridki, and we called
him Dormouse because he was a round, little, sleepy little man.
He was a good doctor and never quarreled with any one,
not even with the 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 Hillardce of
the Burroughs, 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.
This is a delightful country for married folk who were
wrapped up in one another. They can live absolutely alone
and without interruption, just as the dor mice did. Those
two little people retired from the world after their marriage
and were very happy. They were forced, of course, to
give occasional dinners, but they made no friends hereby, and
the station went its own way and forgot them, only
saying occasionally that Dormouse was the best of good fellows.
Though dull. A civil surgeon who never quarrels, is a
rarity and appreciated as such. Few people can afford to
play Robinson Crusoe anywhere, least of all in India, where
we are few in the land and very much dependent
on each other's kind offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting
himself from the world for a year, and he discovered
his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid broke out in
the station in the heart of the cold weather, and
his wife went down. He was a shy little man,
and five days were wasted before he realized that Missus
Dumoise was burning with something worse than simple fever, and
three days more passed before he ventured to call on
Missus Chute, the engineer's wife, and timidly speak about his trouble.
Nearly every household in India knows that doctors are very
helpless in typhoid. The battle must be fought out between
death and the nurses, minute by minute and degree by degree.
Missus Shute almost boxed demoises Ears for what she called
his criminal delay, and went off at once to look
after the poor girl. We had seven cases of typhoid
and 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 too and tended the bachelors who
were down. And we wrestled with those typhoid cases for
fifty two days and brought them through the Valley of
the Shadow in triumph. But just when we thought all
was over and were going to give us Cinderella to
celebrate the victory, little Missus Dumoills got a relapse and
died in three days, and the station went to the funeral.
Dumois 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 in
his own service told him so. Doumois was very thankful
for this suggestion. He was thankful for anything in those days,
and went to Chini on a wocking turn. 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 cliffs, and over big still grass downs swelling like
a woman's breast, and the wind across the grass, and
the rain among the deadores says hush, hush, hush. So
little Dumois was packed off to Chini to wear down
his grief with a full plate camera and a rifle.
He took also a useless purbier bearer, because the man
had been his wife's favorite servant. That bearer was idle
and a thief, but Dumois trusted everything implicitly to him.
On his way back from Chini, Dumois turned aside to
Balgi through the forest reserve, which is on the spur
of Mount Hottu. Some men who have traveled more than
a little say that the march from Kotgar 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. Barkie Dock Bungalow is open to all the
winds and is bitterly cold. Few people go to Barkie.
Perhaps that was the reason why Dumors went there. He
halted at seven in the evening, and his bearer went
down the hillside to the village to engage Coolie's for
the next day's march. The sun had set and the
night winds were beginning to sing among the rocks. Dumoise
leaned on the railing of the Verandah, waiting for his
barrow 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 terror.
He raced to the verandah and fell down, the blood
spurting from his nose and his face iron gray. Then
he gurgled, I have seen the maem Sob. I have
seen the mem sob. Where, asked Doumoise, down there walking
on the road to the village. She was in a
blue dress, and she lifted the poda of her bonnet
and said, ram Das, give my salaams to the sob
and tell him that I shall meet him next month
at Nudia. Then I ran away because I was afraid
what Dumoise said or did I do not know? Ram
Das declares that he said nothing, but walked up and
down the verandah all the cold night, waiting for the
Memsb to come up the hill, and stretching out his
arms into the dark like a madman. But no mem
Sob came, And next day he went on to Simla Cross,
questioning the bearer every hour, ram Das could only say
that he had met missus 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
Das adhered he did not know where Nadiah was, had
no friends at Nadia and would most certainly never go
to Nadia, even though his pay were doubled. Nadia is
in Bengal and has nothing whatever to do with a
doctor serving in the Punjab. It must be more than
twelve hundred miles from Meridki. Dumoise went through Similar without
halting and returned to Meridki, there to take overcharge 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, Dumoirs told his locum Tenens, who was an
old friend of his bachelor days, what had happened at Bargi,
and the man said that ram Das might as well
have chosen Tutti Korin while he was about it. At
that moment a telegraph peon came in with a telegram
from Similar, ordering Dumoirs not to take over charge at Meridki,
but to go at once to Nadia on special duty.
There was a nasty outbreak of cholera at Nadea, and
the Bengal government being shorthanded as usual, had borrowed a
surgeon from the Punjab. Dumoirs 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
Doumoise had passed through Simla on his way from Bargie,
and thus might possibly have heard 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 CHINNI I was shooting there. I wished 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. Dumoises just opened trunks.
Ramdas entered with the lamps. Where is the sob going?
He asked to Nadier, said Demoise softly. Ramdas clawed Domoises
knees and boots and begged him not to go. Ramdas
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
Nadir to see his sob die and perhaps to die himself.
So Doumirs gave the man his chit and went down
to Nadir alone, the other doctor bidding him good bye
as one under sentence of death. Eleven days later he
had joined his memsb and the Bengal government had to
borrow a fresh doctor to cope with that epidemic at Nada.
The first importation was dead at Tuidanga Dark Bungalow, and
of by word of mouth by RODGERD. Kipling