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Updated: June 7, 2025
There had been opportunities even the day nurse had gone, and Lindsay came to tea in the drawing-room but he seemed to prefer to talk about the pattern in the carpet, or the corpulence of the khansamah, or things in the newspapers. Alicia, once, at a suggestive point, put almost a visible question into a silent glance, and Lindsay asked her for some more sugar.
Rising, he found it and inspected the cork narrowly to make sure it had not been tampered with; then he drew it. The khansamah returned with the glass and an unopened bottle of Schweppe's, and prepared the drink under eyes that watched him narrowly. While Amber drank he laid a place for him at the table.
He needed the stimulant badly. He was sleepy and his head was in a whirl. He sat lost in thought until the khansamah brought the decoction, then roused and drank it as it came from the pot, without sugar, gulping down huge bitter mouthfuls of the scalding black fluid. But the effect that he expected and desired was strangely long in making itself felt.
"A billiard room for the Sahibs who built the Railway. I was khansamah then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived, and I used to come across with brandy-shrab. These three rooms were all one, and they held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."
Then came the ratub a curious meal, half native and half English in composition with the old khansamah babbling behind my chair about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains.
Not for everything in Asia would I have dropped the door-bar and peered into the dark of the next room. When the morning came, I considered that I had done well and wisely, and inquired for the means of departure. "By the way, khansamah," I said, "what were those three doolies doing in my compound in the night?" "There were no doolies," said the khansamah.
A khansamah who was accustomed to serve in the women's apartment came to that place in his search, and recognizing her, said, "Will you not please to come home?" Surja Mukhi made no answer. Again he said, "Pray come home, the whole household is anxious." Then, in an angry voice, Surja Mukhi said, "Who are you to take me back?" The khansamah was frightened; nevertheless he remained standing.
To the Daily Telegraph Sir Edwin Arnold contributed a poem entitled "Aphrodite Anadyomené; or, Venus at the Round Pond." My mother can remember only the last stanza, which ran as follows: "Though I fly to Fushiyama, Steeped in opalescent Karma, I shall ne'er forget my charmer, My adorable Khansamah. Though I fly to Tokio, Where the sweet chupatties blow, I shall ne'er forget thee, no!
It stood on a bypath largely used by native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests; but real Sahibs were rare. The khansamah, who was nearly bent double with old age, said so. When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a noise like the rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy palms outside.
Then came the ratub a curious meal, half native and half English in composition with the old khansamah babbling behind my chair about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains.
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