Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy by Rudyard Kipling Read Free Book Online Page B

women and indigestible food till the day of your death.’
    The rickshaw kept steadily in front; and my red-whiskered friend seemed to derive great pleasure from my account of its exact whereabouts.
    ‘Eyes, Pansay – all eyes, brain, and stomach; and the greatest of these three is stomach. You’ve too much conceited brain, too little stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy eyes. Get your stomach straight and the rest follows. And all that’s French for a liver pill. I’ll take sole medical charge of you from this hour; for you’re too interesting a phenomenon to be passed over.’
    By this time we were deep in the shadow of the Blessington lower road and the rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, overhanging shale cliff. Instinctively I halted too, giving my reason. Heatherlegh rapped out an oath.
    ‘Now, if you think I’m going to spend a cold night on the hillside for the sake of a stomach- cum- brain -cum -eyeillusion … Lord ha’ mercy! What’s that?’
    That was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the cliffside – pines, undergrowth and all – slid down into the road below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two horses stood motionless and sweating with fear. As soon as the rattle of falling earth and stone had subsided, my companion muttered: ‘Man, if we’d gone forward we should have been ten feet deep in our graves by now! “There are more things in heaven and earth” … Come home, Pansay, and thank God. I want a drink badly.’
    We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I arrived at Dr Heatherlegh’s house shortly after midnight.
    His attempts towards my cure commenced almost immediately, and for a week I never left his sight. Many a time in the course of that week did I bless the good fortune which had thrown me in contact with Simla’s best and kindest doctor.Day by day my spirits grew lighter and more equable. Day by day, too, I became more and more inclined to fall in with Heatherlegh’s ‘spectral illusion’ theory, implicating eyes, brain, and stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a slight sprain caused by a fall from horse kept me indoors for a few days; and that I should be recovered before she had time to regret my absence.
    Heatherlegh’s treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of liver-pills, cold-water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk or at early dawn – for, as he sagely observed: ‘A man with a sprained ankle doesn’t walk a dozen miles a day, and your young woman might be wondering if she saw you.’
    At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse and strict injunctions as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dismissed me as brusquely as he had taken charge of me. Here is his parting benediction: ‘Man, I certify to your mental cure, and that’s as much as to say I’ve cured most of your bodily ailments. Now, get your traps out of this as soon as you can; and be off to make love to Miss Kitty.’
    I was endeavouring to express my thanks for his kindness. He cut me short:
    ‘Don’t think I did this because I like you. I gather that you’ve behaved like a blackguard all through. But, all the same you’re a phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard. Now, go out and see if you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach business again. I’ll give you a lakh for each time you see it.’
    Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings’ drawing-room with Kitty drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the foreknowledge that I should never more be troubled with Its hideous presence. Strong in the sense of my newfound security, I proposed a ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.
    Never had I felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere animal