Driftwood Spars Part 24

He looked puzzled, counted, and said:--

"Why--twenty, ain't there?"

I numbered the troop.

Twenty--and Burker.

"Tell off by sections."

Five sections--and Burker.

"Sections right."

A column of five sections--and Burker, in the rear.

I called out the section-leader of Number One section.

"Are the sections correctly proved?" I asked, and added: "Put the troop back in line and tell-off again".

"Five sections, correct," he reported.

I held that drill, with five sections of living men, and a single file of dead, who manoeuvred to my word.

When I gave the order "With Numbers Three for action dismount," or "Right-hand men, for action dismount," Burker remained mounted. When I dismounted the whole troop, Burker remained mounted. Otherwise he drilled precisely as Number Twenty-one would have drilled in a troop of twenty-one men.

Was I frightened? I do not know.

At first my heart certainly pounded as though it would leap from my body, and I felt dazed, lost, and shocked.

I think I _was_ frightened--not of Burker so much as of the unfamiliar, the unknown, the impossible.

How would you feel if your piano suddenly began to play of itself? You would be alarmed and afraid probably, not frightened of the piano, but of the fact.

A door could not frighten you--but you would surely be alarmed at its persistently opening, each time you shut, locked, and bolted it, if it acted thus.

Of Burker I had no fear--but I was perturbed by the _fact_ that the dead could ride with the living.

When I gave the order "Dismiss" at the end of the parade Burker rode away, as he had always done, in the direction of his bungalow.

Returning to my lonely house, I sat me down and pondered this appalling event that had come like a torrent, sweeping away familiar landmarks of experience, idea, and belief. I was conscious of a dull anger against Burker and then against G.o.d.

Why should He allow Burker to haunt me?...

Why should Evil triumph?...

_Was_ I haunted? Or was it, after all, but a hallucination--due to grief, trouble, and the drug of the opiate?

I sat and brooded until I thought I could hear the voices of Burker and Dolores in converse.

This I knew to be hallucination, pure and simple, and I went to see my friend (if he will let me call him what he is in the truest and highest sense) Major Jackson of the R.A.M.C.

He took me for a long ride, kept me to dinner, and manufactured a job for me--a piece of work that would occupy and tire me.

He a.s.sured me that the Burker affair was pure hallucination and staked his professional reputation that the image of Burker came upon my retina from within and not from without. "The shock of the deaths of your wife and your friend on consecutive days has unhinged you, and very naturally so," he said.

Of course I did not tell him that I had killed Burker, though I should have liked to do so. I felt I had no right to put him in the position of having to choose between denouncing me and condoning a murder--compounding a felony.

Nor did I see any reason for confessing to the Police what I had done (even though Dolores was dead) and finis.h.i.+ng my career on the scaffold.

One owes something to one's ancestors as well as to oneself. Well, perhaps it was a hallucination. I would wait.

At the next drill Burker was present and rode as Number Three in Section Six.

As there were twenty-three (living) on parade I ordered Number Twenty-three to ride as Number Four of his section and leave a blank file.

Burker rode in that blank file and drilled so, throughout--save that he would not dismount.

Once, as the troop rode in column of sections, I fell to the rear and, coming up behind, struck with all my might at that slightly nebulous figure, with its faint vagueness of outline and hint of transparency.

My heavy cutting-whip whistled--and touched nothing. I was as one who beats the air. Section Six must have thought me mad.... Twice again the dead man drilled with the living, and each time I described what happened to Major Jackson.

"It is a persistent hallucination," said he; "you must go on leave."

"I won't run from Burker, nor from a hallucination," I replied.

Then came the end.

At the next drill, twenty-one gentlemen were present and Number Twenty-one, the Sessions Judge of Duri, a Scot, kept staring with looks of amazement and alarm at Burker, who rode as Number Four on his flank, making an odd file into a skeleton section. I was certain that he saw Burker.

As the gentlemen "dismissed" after parade, the Judge rode up to me and, with a white face, demanded:--

"Who the devil was that rode with me as Number Twenty-four? It was--it was--like--Sergeant Burker."

"It _was_ Sergeant Burker, Sir," said I.

"I knew it was," he replied, and added: "Man, you and I are fey."

"Will you tell Major Jackson of this, Sir?" I begged. "He knows I have seen Burker's ghost here before, and tells me it is a hallucination."

"I'll go and see him now." he replied. "He is an old friend of mine, and--he's a d.a.m.ned good doctor. Man--you and I are fey." He rode to where his trap, with its spirited cob, was awaiting him, dismounted and drove off.

As everybody knows, Mr. Blake of the Indian Civil Service, Sessions Judge of Duri, was thrown from his trap and killed. It happened five minutes after he had said to me, with a queer look in his eyes, and a queer note in his voice, "Man! you and I are fey".... So it is no hallucination and I am haunted by Burker's ghost. Very good. I will fight Burker on his own ground.

My ghost shall haunt Burker's ghost--or I shall be at peace.

Though the religion of the Chaplain has failed me, the religion of my Mother, taught to me at her knee, has implanted in me an ineradicable belief in the ultimate justice of things, and the unquenchable hope of "somehow good".

I am about to go before my Maker or to obliteration and oblivion. If the former, I am prepared to say to Him: "You made me a man. I have played the man. I look to you for justice, and that is--compensation and not 'forgiveness'. Much less is it punishment. You have treated me ill and given me no help. You have bestowed free-_will_ without free-_dom_.