Kafiristan

But what is it you want of me?

Naught but a look at such maps of Kafiristan as you might have about.

Maps of Kafiristan?

That's where we've decided to go.

But don't you realize that not one single Englishman has ever gone into the Kafiristan mountains and lived to come out again? If you're really mad enough to go there, you're a good deal more likely to become dead men than kings.

We shall see.

Anyway, I don't believe you have the slightest intention of traveling a mile outside of Delhi.

Oh, here now, go about your business.

His program is always the same.

He appears by my bedside, shakes me roughly by the shoulder, passes from my room into the laboratory, walks slowly along the line of my bottles, and then vanishes For more than a thousand times he had gone through the same routine What does he want? He wants his hand His hand? Yes It came about in this way I was summoned to Peshawar for a consultation some ten years ago and while there I was asked to look at the hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan The fellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyond somewhere on the other side of Kafiristan He talked a bastard Pashtu and it was all I could do to understand him He was suffering from a soft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints and I made him realize that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope to save his life After much persuasion he consented to the operation and he asked me when it was over what fee I demanded The poor fellow was almost a beggar so the idea of a fee was absurd but I answered in jest that my fee should be his hand and that I proposed to add it to my pathological collection To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion and he explained that according to his religion it was an all-important matter that the body should be reunited after death and so make a perfect dwelling for the spirit The belief is of course an old one and the mummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition I answered him that his hand was already off and asked him how he intended to preserve it He replied that he would pickle it in salt and carry it about with him I suggested that it might be safer in my keeping than his and that I had better means than salt for preserving it On realizing that I really intended to carefully keep it his opposition vanished instantly But remember Sahib said he I shall want it back when I'm dead I laughed at the remark and so the matter ended I returned to my practice and he no doubt in the course of time was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan Well as I told you last night I had a bad fire in my house in Bombay Half of it was burned down and among other things my pathological collection was largely destroyed What you see are the poor remains of it The hand of the hillman went with the rest but I gave the matter no particular thought at the time That was six years ago Four years ago two years after the fire I was awakened one night by a furious tugging at my sleeve I sat up under the impression that my favorite mastiff was trying to rouse me Instead of this I saw my Indian patient of long ago dressed in the long gray gown which was the badge of his people He was holding up his stump and looking reproachfully at me He then went over to my bottles which at that time I kept in my room and he examined them carefully after which he gave a gesture of anger and vanished I realized that he had just died and that he'd come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in safety for him Well there you have it all Dr Hardacre Every night at the same hour for four years this performance has been repeated It is a simple thing in itself but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone It has brought a vile insomnia with it for I cannot sleep now for the expectation of his coming It has poisoned my old age and that of my wife who has been the sharer in this great trouble Ah but there is the breakfast gong and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared with you last night We are both much indebted to you for your gallantry for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when we share it even for a single night with a friend and it reassures us to our sanity which we're sometimes driven to question This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominic confided to me a story which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility but which after my experience of the night before and my previous knowledge of such things I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact I thought deeply over the matter and brought the whole range of my reading and experience to bear upon it After breakfast I surprised my host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the next train My dear doctor cried Sir Dominic in great distress you make me feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in intruding this unfortunate matter upon you I should have borne my own burden It is indeed that matter which is taking me to London I answered but you are mistaken I assure you if you think that my experience of last night was an unpleasant one to me On the contrary I am about to ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in your laboratory I am very eager to see this visitor once again My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do but my fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him I was back in my own consulting room a little after luncheon and was confirming my memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested my attention when I read it In the case of earthbound spirits said my authority some one dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold them in this material world They are the amphibia of this life and of the next capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passes from land to water The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to a life which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion Avarice revenge anxiety love and pity have all been known to have this effect As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish and when the wish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes There are many cases upon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors and also their disappearance when the wishes have been fulfilled or in some cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected A reasonable compromise effected.

Those were the words which I had brooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original.

No actual atonement could be made here, but a reasonable compromise.