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Updated: May 21, 2025
Correcting sheets, etc., took up the morning hours. I wrote three leaves before two o'clock. Day bitter cold with snow, a strong contrast to the mild weather we had last week. Salutation of two old Scottish lairds: "Ye're maist obedient hummil servant, Tannachy Tulloh." "Your nain man, Kilspindie." Finished six pages, twenty-five pages of print that is, or about the thirteenth part of a volume.
The punkah was still being pulled over the bed, but Hummil had departed this life at least three hours. The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the side, as Spurstow had seen it lying seven nights previously. In the staring eyes was written terror beyond the expression of any pen. Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched the forehead lightly with his lips.
You like to talk, don't you? 'Yes, sometimes. Not when I'm frightened. THEN I want to run. Don't you? 'Always. Before I give you your second dose try to tell me exactly what your trouble is. Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly ten minutes, whilst Spurstow looked into the pupils of his eyes and passed his hand before them once or twice.
'That's settled, he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. 'These little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too much sympathy with gun-room accidents. And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried in the doorway, 'You fool! Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to their friends a little before they die.
You couldn't sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense? 'A place, a place down there, said Hummil, with simple sincerity. The drug was acting on him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of a strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves gathered sense or were dulled. 'Good God! I've been afraid of it for months past, Spurstow.
'You take a pill, said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil's white face narrowly. 'Take a pill, and don't be an ass. That sort of talk is skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that I'd stay on and watch. 'Ah! I've lost that curiosity, said Hummil. 'Liver out of order? said Lowndes feelingly.
Hummil, the assistant engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends thus every Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to appear, he would send a telegram to his last address, in order that he might know whether the defaulter were dead or alive.
Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. 'I'll patch him up, later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride? 'Where to? said Lowndes wearily. 'We shall have to go away at eight, and there'll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse, when I have to use him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to do? 'Poker.
It slid through the house and dissolved into swimming specks within the eyeball as soon as it reached the burning light of the garden. Hummil went about his business till even. When he came in to dinner he found himself sitting at the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily. Except that it cast no shadow it was in all respects real. No living man knows what that week held for Hummil.
'If you'd killed the man yourself you couldn't have been more quiet about the business. 'Good Lord! what does it matter? said Hummil calmly. 'I've got to do a lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I'm the only person that suffers. Jevins is out of it, by pure accident, of course, but out of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide.
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