1888
HAUNTED SUBALTERNS
by Rudyard Kipling
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
HAUNTED SUBALTERNS
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SO long as the 'Inextinguishables' confined themselves to running
picnics, gymkhanas, flirtations and innocences of that kind, no one
said anything. But when they ran ghosts, people put up their eyebrows.
'Man can't feel comfy with a regiment that entertains ghosts on its
establishment. It is against General Orders. The 'Inextinguishables'
said that the ghosts were private and not Regimental property. They
referred you to Tesser for particulars; and Tesser told you to go
to- the hottest cantonment of all. He said that it was bad enough to
have men making hay of his bedding and breaking his banjo-strings when
he was out, without being chaffed afterwards; and he would thank you
to keep your remarks on ghosts to yourself. This was before the
'Inextinguishables' had sworn by their several lady-loves that they
were innocent of any intrusion into Tesser's quarters. Then Horrocks
mentioned casually at Mess, that a couple of white figures had been
bounding about his room the night before, and he didn't approve of it.
The 'Inextinguishables' denied, energetically, that they had had any
hand in the manifestations, and advised Horrocks to consult Tesser.
I don't suppose that a Subaltern believes in anything except his
chances of a Company; but Horrocks and Tesser were exceptions. They
came to believe in their ghosts. They had reason.
Horrocks used to find himself, at about three o'clock in the
morning, staring wide-awake, watching two white Things hopping about
his room and jumping up to the ceiling. Horrocks was of a placid
turn of mind. After a week or so spent in watching his servants, and
lying in wait for strangers, and trying to keep awake all night, he
came to the conclusion that he was haunted, and that, consequently, he
need not bother. He wasn't going to encourage these ghosts by being
frightened of them. Therefore, when he woke- as usual- with a start
and saw these Things jumping like kangaroos, he only murmured:- 'Go
on! Don't mind me!' and went to sleep again.
Tesser said:- 'It's all very well for you to make fun of your
show. You can see your ghosts. Now I can't see mine, and I don't
half like it.'
Tesser used to come into his room of nights, and find the whole of
his bedding neatly stripped, as if it had been done with one sweep
of the hand, from the top right-hand corner of the charpoy to the
bottom left-hand corner. Also his lamp used to lie weltering on the
floor, and generally his pet screw-head, inlaid, nickel-plated banjo
was lying on the charpoy, with all its strings broken. Tesser took
away the strings, on the occasion of the third manifestation, and
the next night a man complimented him on his playing the best music
ever got out of a banjo, for half an hour.
'Which half hour?' said Tesser.
'Between nine and ten,' said the man. Tesser had gone out to
dinner at 7:30, and had returned at midnight.
He talked to his bearer and threatened him with unspeakable
things. The bearer was gray with fear:- 'I'm a poor man,' said he. 'If
the Sahib is haunted by a Devil, what can I do?'
'Who says I'm haunted by a Devil?' howled Tesser, for he was angry.
'I have seen It,' said the bearer, 'at night, walking round and
round your bed; and that is why everything is ulta-pulta in your
room. I am a poor man, but I never go into your room alone. The
bhisti comes with me.'
Tesser was thoroughly savage at this, and he spoke to Horrocks,
and the two laid traps to catch that Devil, and threatened their
servants with dog-whips if any more 'shaitan-ke-hanky-panky' took
place. But the servants were soaked with fear, and it was no use
adding to their tortures. When Tesser went out at night, four of his
men, as a rule, slept in the verandah of his quarters, until the banjo
without the strings struck up, and then they fled.
One day, Tesser had to put in a month at a Fort with a detachment of
'Inextinguishables.' The Fort might have been Govindghar, Jumrood,
or Phillour; but it wasn't. He left Cantonments rejoicing, for his
Devil was preying on his mind; and with him went another Subaltern,
a junior. But the Devil came too. After Tesser had been in the Fort
about ten days he went out to dinner. When he came back he found his
Subaltern doing sentry on a banquette across the Fort Ditch, as far
removed as might be from the Officers' Quarters.
'What's wrong?' said Tesser.
The Subaltern said, 'Listen!' and the two, standing under the stars,
heard from the Officers' Quarters, high up in the wall of the Fort,
the 'strumty tumty tumty' of the banjo; which seemed to have an
oratorio on hand.
'That performance,' said the Subaltern, 'has been going on for three
mortal hours. I never wished to desert before, but I do now. I say,
Tesser, old man, you are the best of good fellows, I'm sure, but...
I say... look here, now, you are quite unfit to live with. 'Tisn't
in my Commission, you know, that I'm to serve under a... a... man with
Devils.'
'Isn't it?' said Tesser. 'If you make an ass of yourself I'll put
you under arrest... and in my room!'
'You can put me where you please, but I'm not going to assist at
these infernal concerts. 'Tisn't right. 'Tisn't natural. Look here,
I don't want to hurt your feelings, but- try to think now- haven't you
done something- committed some- murder that has slipped your memory-
or forged something...?'
'Well! For an all-round, double-shotted, half-baked fool you are
the...'
'I dare say I am,' said the Subaltern. 'But you don't expect me to
keep my wits with that row going on, do you?'
The banjo was rattling away as if it had twenty strings. Tesser sent
up a stone, and a shower of broken window-pane fell into the Fort
Ditch; but the banjo kept on. Tesser hauled the other Subaltern up
to the quarters, and found his room in frightful confusion- lamp
upset, bedding all over the floor, chairs overturned, and table tilted
sideways. He took stock of the wreck and said despairing:- 'Oh, this
is lovely!'
The Subaltern was peeping in at the door.
'I'm glad you think so,' he said. ''Tisn't lovely enough for me. I
locked up your room directly after you had gone out. See here, I
think you had better apply for Horrocks to come out in my place.
He's troubled with your complaint, and this business will make me a
jabbering idiot if it goes on.'
Tesser went to bed amid the wreckage, very angry, and next morning
he rode into Cantonments and asked Horrocks to arrange to relieve
'that fool with me now.'
'You've got 'em again, have you?' said Horrocks. 'So've I. Three
white figures this time. We'll worry through the entertainment
together.'
So Horrocks and Tesser settled down in the Fort together, and the
'Inextinguishables' said pleasant things about 'seven other Devils.'
Tesser didn't see where the joke came in. His room was thrown
upside-down three nights out of seven. Horrocks was not troubled in
any way, so his ghosts must have been purely local ones. Tesser, on
the other hand, was personally haunted; for his Devil had moved with
him from Cantonments to the Fort. Those two boys spent three parts
of their time trying to find out who was responsible for the riot in
Tesser's rooms. At the end of a fortnight they tried to find out
what was responsible; and seven days later they gave it up as a
bad job. Whatever It was, It refused to be caught; even when Tesser
went out of the Fort ostentatiously, and Horrocks lay under Tesser's
charpoy with a revolver. The servants were afraid- more afraid than
ever- and all the evidence showed that they had been playing no
tricks. As Tesser said to Horrocks:- 'A haunted Subaltern is a joke,
but s'pose this keeps on. Just think what a haunted Colonel would
be! And look here- s'pose I marry! D'you s'pose a girl would live a
week with me and this Devil?'
'I don't know,' said Horrocks. 'I haven't married often; but I
knew a woman once who lived with her husband when he had D. T. He's
dead now, and I dare say she would marry you if you asked her. She
isn't exactly a girl though, but she has a large experience of the
other devils- the blue variety. She's a Government pensioner now,
and you might write, y'know. Personally, if I hadn't suffered from
ghosts of my own, I should rather avoid you.'
'That's just the point,' said Tesser. 'This Devil thing will end
in getting me budnamed, and you know I've lived on lemon-squashes
and gone to bed at ten for weeks past.'
''Tisn't that sort of Devil,' said Horrocks. 'It's either a
first-class fraud for which some one ought to be killed, or else
you've offended one of these Indian Devils. It stands to reason that
such a beastly country should be full of fiends of all sorts.'
'But why should the creature fix on me,' said Tesser, and why
won't he show himself and have it out like a- like a Devil?'
They were talking outside the Mess after dark, and, even as they
spoke, they heard the banjo begin to play in Tesser's room, about
twenty yards off.
Horrocks ran to his own quarters for a shot-gun and a revolver,
and Tesser and he crept up quietly, the banjo still playing, to
Tesser's door.
'Now we've got It!' said Horrocks, as he threw the door open and let
fly with the twelve-bore; Tesser squibbing off all six barrels into
the dark, as hard as he could pull trigger.
The furniture was ruined, and the whole Fort was awake; but that was
all. No one had been killed, and the banjo was lying on the
dishevelled bed-clothes as usual.
Then Tesser sat down in the verandah, and used language that would
have qualified him for the companionship of unlimited Devils. Horrocks
said things too; but Tesser said the worst.
When the month in the Fort came to an end, both Horrocks and
Tesser were glad. They held a final council of war, but came to no
conclusion.
''Seems to me, your best plan would be to make your Devil stretch
himself. Go down to Bombay with the time-expired men,' said
Horrocks. 'If he really is a Devil, he'll come in the train with you.'
''Tisn't good enough,' said Tesser. 'Bombay's no fit place to live
in at this time of the year. But I'll put in for Depot duty at the
Hills.' And he did.
Now here the tale rests. The Devil stayed below, and Tesser went
up and was free. If I had invented this story, I should have put in
a satisfactory ending- explained the manifestations as somebody's
practical joke. My business being to keep to facts, I can only say
what I have said. The Devil may have been a hoax. If so, it was one of
the best ever arranged. If it was not a hoax... but you must settle
that for yourselves.
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THE END
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