As she reached her abode, and called “Qui hai! buttie lao!” a figure came out from the passage, salaamed respectfully, and, by the light of a two-anna lamp on the staircase, she descried the strange Khitmatgar, whose appearance was perfectly familiar to her—a short, square, surly-looking person. No doubt he was one of Kadir’s many friends; the lower rooms were generally overrun with his visitors.
“Send Kadir!” she said imperiously, and went upstairs, and as she spoke the man salaamed again and vanished.
The wife of his bosom had a fine tale to tell Mr. Jackson the next morning, as, with a very shaky hand, he was touching up some plates in his own room.
“A Khitmatgar that offers free pegs!” he exclaimed, with a shout of laughter. “Too good to be true. Why, I’d take a whisky and soda from the devil himself—and glad to get it. My mouth is like a lime-kiln at this moment—Qui hai! whisky-pani do!”
Many days, warm and sweltering days, rolled on; the hot winds blew the crackling leaves before them, blew great clouds of red dust along the roads, blew ladies up to the hills, and dispersed many of Jackson’s patrons. But he did not care; he had made a good many rupees; he had more than one boon-companion, and he drank harder than ever. “Why not?” he demanded; “he had earned the money, and had the best right to spend it.” He was earning none now. When customers came, Kadir always informed them the sahib was sota (asleep). Yes, sleeping off the effects of the preceding night. Mrs. Jackson was accustomed to this state of affairs, and what she called his “attacks.” She rocked herself, fanned herself and dozed, and did a little crochet, whilst the two children played quietly in a back room, with old photographs and bits of cardboard. When her husband did awake, and enjoy a few hours’ lucid interval, it was only to recall bills and duns, and flashes of his old life: the cool green park at home, the hunting-field, reviews at Aldershot, his pretty cousin Ethel. Then the chill reality forced itself upon his half-crazy brain. The park was this great, barren, scorched compound, with the hot winds roaring across it; the figure in the verandah was not Ethel in her riding-habit, but Fernanda in carpet slippers and a greasy old dressing-gown. Was this life worth living?
Mrs. Jackson had seen the Khitmatgar several times; once she noticed him looking down at her as she ascended the stairs, once he had appeared in answer to her call, carrying a tray and glasses, but she had boldly waved him away, and said, “Send Kadir; why does he allow strangers to do his work?” There was something far too human about the appearance of the man for her to give a moment’s credence to the ghost-story.
One still hot night, a night as bright as day, Mrs. Jackson found the air so oppressive that she could not sleep. She lay tossing from side to side on her charpoy, looking out on the moon-flooded verandah, and listening to the indefatigable brain-fever bird, when suddenly she heard her husband’s familiar call, “Qui hai, peg lao!” He had been drinking as usual, and had fallen into a sodden sleep in his own room.
After an unusually short interval, steps came up the stairs, shoes were audibly slipped off, and there were sounds of the jingling of a glass and bottle.
The door of Mrs. Jackson’s apartment opened into the verandah and stood wide, on account of the intense breathless heat of that Indian night. In a few moments some one came and paused on the threshold, tray in hand, some one who surveyed her with a grin of Satanic satisfaction. It was the strange Khitmatgar! There was a triumphant expression in his eyes that made her blood run cold, and whilst she gazed, transfixed with horror, he salaamed and was gone. In a second she had jumped out of bed; she ran into the verandah. Yes, the long verandah was empty—he had disappeared. She called excitedly to her husband; no answer. She rushed into his room, to unfold her experience. Jackson was sitting at the table, or rather half lying across it, his hands clenched, his features convulsed, his eyes fixed—quite dead.
He had swallowed one of his chemicals, a fatal poison. Of course, there was the usual ephemeral excitement occasioned by a tragedy in the station, the usual inquest and verdict of temporary insanity, and then a new nameless grave in the corner of the cantonment cemetery.