No More Learning

It was close upon five o'clock of a
cloudy April afternoon, and the sun had been hidden all day. I saw my
mistake as soon as the words were out of my mouth: attempted to recover
it; blundered hopelessly and followed Kitty in a regal rage, out of
doors, amid the smiles of my acquaintances. I made some excuse (I have
forgotten what) on the score of my feeling faint; and cantered away to
my hotel, leaving Kitty to finish the ride by herself.

In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter.

Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal Civilian in
the year of grace, 1885, presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in
terror from my sweetheart's side by the apparition of a woman who had
been dead and buried eight months ago. These were facts that I could
not blink. Nothing was further from my thought than any memory of Mrs.
Wessington when Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop. Nothing was more
utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti's. It was
broad daylight. The road was full of people; and yet here, look you,
in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of Nature's
ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.

Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rickshaw: so that my first hope that
some woman marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired the carriage and
the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and again I went round
this treadmill of thought; and again and again gave up baffled and
in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as the apparition.
I had
originally some wild notion of confiding it all to Kitty; of begging her
to marry me at once; and in her arms defying the ghostly occupant of the
'rickshaw. "After all," I argued, "the presence of the 'rickshaw is in
itself enough to prove the existence of a spectral illusion. One may see
ghosts of men and women, but surely never of coolies and carriages. The
whole thing is absurd. Fancy the ghost of a hill-man! "

Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to overlook
my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. My Divinity was still very
wroth, and a personal apology was necessary. I explained, with a fluency
born of night-long pondering over a falsehood, that I had been attacked
with sudden palpitation of the heart--the result of indigestion. This
eminently practical solution had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out
that afternoon with the shadow of my first lie dividing us.

Nothing would please her save a canter round Jakko. With my nerves still
unstrung from the previous night I feebly protested against the notion,
suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge road--anything
rather than the Jakko round. Kitty was angry and a little hurt: so I
yielded from fear of provoking further misunderstanding, and we set out
together toward Chota Simla. We walked a greater part of the way, and,
according to our custom, cantered from a mile or so below the Convent
to the stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched
horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as we
neared the crest of the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs. Wessington
all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore witness to our
oldtime walks and talks.