No More Learning

The second and most tormenting
of my moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the
Prince in Tennyson's poem, "I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts. "
There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief's, and we two
joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them then it seemed
that they were the shadows--impalpable, fantastic shadows--that divided
for Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. What we said during
the course of that weird interview I cannot--indeed, I dare not--tell.
Heatherlegh's comment would have been a short laugh and a remark that I
had been "mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera. " It was a ghastly and
yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear experience. Could it be
possible, I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a second time the
woman I had killed by my own neglect and cruelty?

I met Kitty on the homeward road--a shadow among shadows.

If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in their
order, my story would never come to an end; and your patience would Be
exhausted. Morning after morning and evening after evening the ghostly
'rickshaw and I used to wander through Simla together. Wherever I went
there the four black and white liveries followed me and bore me company
to and from my hotel. At the Theatre I found them amid the crowd of
yelling jhampanies; outside the Club veranda, after a long evening of
whist; at the Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance; and
in broad daylight when I went calling. Save that it cast no shadow, the
'rickshaw was in every respect as real to look upon as one of wood and
iron. More than once, indeed, I have had to check myself from warning
some hard-riding friend against cantering over it.
More than once I have
walked down the Mall deep in conversation with Mrs. Wessington to the
unspeakable amazement of the passers-by.

Before I had been out and about a week I learned that the "fit" theory
had been discarded in favor of insanity. However, I made no change in my
mode of life. I called, rode, and dined out as freely as ever. I had
a passion for the society of my kind which I had never felt before; I
hungered to be among the realities of life; and at the same time I
felt vaguely unhappy when I had been separated too long from my ghostly
companion. It would be almost impossible to describe my varying moods
from the 15th of May up to today.

The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind
fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave
Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew, moreover,
that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. My only
anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as might be. Alternately
I hungered for a sight of Kitty and watched her outrageous flirtations
with my successor--to speak more accurately, my successors--with amused
interest. She was as much out of my life as I was out of hers. By day I
wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By night I implored Heaven
to let me return to the world as I used to know it.