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.
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