Mallender nodded, then he said: "Of course not—it's a—personal affair."
"'Tis so," she agreed, "and the Major made a bargain wid me the day I engaged, and a bargain is a bargain! and so though it goes to me heart, I keep a shut door, and a closed mouth. Anyhow Society don't trouble Panjeverram; it's the leavings of everywhere; just an overgrown, forgotten old place, and cram full of snakes, and ghosts."
"Ghosts! Surely you don't believe in that sort of rot, Mrs. Dixon?"
"Do you, sir?"
"Certainly not, though they say I have a ghost of my own at home."
"Then Captain Mallender, dear, if it's the last word I'll spake—I've seen one!"
"You don't mean that," and he laughed incredulously, "let me hear all about it!"
"Well now, I declare, it's the pure truth I'm going to tell ye," said Mrs. Dixon laying down her work, "when I was a girlie of about fifteen, the Roifles was lying in Madras Fort, and my father was a Quarter-master-Sergeant. Our quarters were fine and big, and near the North Gate; somehow or other, I never felt very easy in our living room; for people—that is the blacks—give out it was haunted by a woman who had hanged herself from the punkah, years and years before."
"Did she? What a foolish thing to do."
"That's as it may be, we don't know the ins and outs! Well, one morning very early, I got up for a drink of water, and as I went past the room, by the verandah, it had a strange sort of appearance, and as far as I could make out, in the dim light,—there was someone in it. And by me faith there was! I thought my heart would lepp out of me mouth, when I saw a woman hanging from the punkah, which was moving slowly backwards and forwards, and backwards and forwards. Her head was all to one side, lying on her shoulder, her arms hung down stiff like, and her dress was going with a sort of 'swish, swish,' that would make your skin creep. For a while, I stood there just paralysed, and then I screeched to me father and mother; and bedad, and I'll tell ye no lie, they saw her too. With the first squint of dawn she faded away, and there was nothing whatever there, but the barrack furniture, and the great heavy old punkah! I tell ye we moved off pretty smartly, though they were fine airy rooms, and I'll lay me life she is hanging there in Sergeants' Quarters A Block to this day."