British -- India -- Fiction; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction; Short stories, English
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 Nuddea 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 the Punjab. It must be more than twelve hundred miles from
Meridki.
Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and returned to Meridki
there 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 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 passed 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 Dass entered with the lamps.
“Where is the Sahib going?” he asked.
“To Nuddea,” 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 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 good-bye 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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