Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/46

 Whether it was too much liquor, or whether Tick really had seen a ghost, we didn't stop to think. He was so awfully cut up no one could have helped being sorry for him.

Well, I and another Johnnie went with him over to his quarters, and Tick chucked himself down on the charpoy and buried his face in the pillow; and his shoulders shook as if he were sobbing like a woman. The other Johnnie turned the lamp down, and we left him and went back to Mess. There we sat up the rest of the night pretty nearly, the lot of us; bukhing about ghosts and delusions, and so on. We were all pretty certain that Tick hadn't got the "jumps" or anything foolish of that kind, because he was as steady as a die in those things—'couldn't have played to win unless his head had been fairly cool you know. Finally we decided that there was no need to tell anyone outside the Mess about the night's business, and that we were all awfully sorry for Tick. I want to remind you that I was sitting tight all this time. I thought of the Customs' mark on the bear skins, and browsed quietly over a peg. About parade time we went to bed. Tick turned up awfully haggard and white on parade.

He took the noon down-train to Lahore that day and cleared out, he didn't tell us where to, on a few days' leave. We did not look at his quarters. Three of us went over to the Club that afternoon, and the first thing a man asked us: was "what we thought of it?" Then all the Johnnies in the smoking-room began to laugh, and then they began to roar. It seems that that blackguard Tick had been over to the Club directly after parade and told all the men there about his yarn over-night, and the way we'd sucked it in from the Colonel downwards. It was all over Pindi before nightfall; and you may guess how they chaffed us about "pukka waltzes" and men with 'dandy rugs, and whether a "betrothal to a dead woman was binding in law." Just you ask one of the 45th that question, and see what happens! When we three rode back to Mess I can tell you that we didn't feel proud of ourselves. There was a regular indignation meeting on, and everyone was talking at the top of his voice. Fellows who had just come in from polo, or from making calls, had all been told of it; and they wanted Tick's blood.

The whole blessed business was a benow from beginning to end and we had believed it. We moved over to Tick's quarters to begin by making hay there. Nothing except the chairs and charpoy (and those belonged to Government) had been left behind.