The Phantom 'Rickshaw: and Other Ghost Stories: Large Print

One of the few advantages that India has over England is a great Knowability. After fiveyears' service a man is directly or indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundredCivilians in his Province, all the Messes of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries, and somefifteen hundred other people of the non-official caste. In ten years his knowledge should bedoubled, and at the end of twenty he knows, or knows something about, every Englishmanin 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 Circleand are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world isvery, very kind and helpful.Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of Kumaon some fifteen years ago. He meant tostay two nights, but was knocked down by rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganizedPolder's establishment, stopped Polder's work, and nearly died in Polder's bedroom. Polderbehaves as though he had been placed under eternal obligation by Rickett, and yearly sendsthe little Ricketts a box of presents and toys. It is the same everywhere. The men who donot take the trouble to conceal from you their opinion that you are an incompetent ass, andthe women who blacken your character and misunderstand your wife's amusements, willwork 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 privateaccount-an arrangement of loose boxes for Incurables, his friend called it-but it wasreally a sort of fitting-up shed for craft that had been damaged by stress of weather. Theweather in India is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is always a fixed quantity, andthe only liberty allowed is permission to work overtime and get no thanks, menoccasionally 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 hispatients is, "lie low, go slow, and keep cool." He says that more men are killed by overworkthan the importance of this world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay, whodied under his hands about three years ago. He has, of course, the right to speakauthoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in Pansay's head and alittle bit of the Dark World came through and pressed him to death. "Pansay went off thehandle," says Heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He may or he may nothave behaved like a blackguard to Mrs. Keith-Wessington. My notion is that the work of theKatabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he took to brooding and making muchof an ordinary P. & O. flirtation. He certainly was engaged to Miss Mannering, and shecertainly broke off the engagement.