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Updated: June 7, 2025
He vexed himself with vain speculations, for it was perfectly certain that he would get nothing in the way of either denial or confirmation out of Ram Nath; and, presently, acknowledging this, he called the khansamah and ordered a peg for the sake of the dust in his throat.
Then, before I could stop him, he flung himself on the back of a pony and went away, saying that it was the will of God that he should return to Badshah for a better tonga. Since when I have had for company one stable-syce, one deaf-and-dumb patriarch of a khansamah and ... the usual dak-bungalow discomforts insects, bad food, and a terrible fear of dacoits."
The khansamah completely lost his head on my arrival. He had served a Sahib once. Did I know that Sahib? He gave me the name of a well-known man who has been buried for more than a quarter of a century, and showed me an ancient daguerreotype of that man in his prehistoric youth.
They are generally very old, always dirty, while the khansamah is as ancient as the bungalow. He either chatters senilely, or falls into the long trances of age. In both moods he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers to some Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and says that when he was in that Sahib's service not a khansamah in the Province could touch him.
An aged, talkative, and amiable khansamah met him at the threshold with expressions of exaggerated respect, no doubt genuine enough, and followed him, a mumbling shadow, as the Virginian made a brief round of inspection.
I had seen a steel engraving of him at the head of a double volume of Memoirs a month before, and I felt ancient beyond telling. The day shut in and the khansamah went to get me food. He did not go through the pretense of calling it "khana" man's victuals. He said "ratub," and that means, among other things, "grub" dog's rations. There was no insult in his choice of the term.
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.
If I had encouraged him the khansamah would have wandered all through Bengal with his corpse. I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for the night, while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding-dong "hundred and fifty up." Then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped, and I felt that I had ruined my one genuine, hall-marked ghost story.
The khansamah followed her from the bungalow, staggering under the weight of her box and kit-bag, and with Ram Nath's surly assistance made them fast to the front seat. While Amber gave the girl his hand to help her to her place, and lifted himself to her side in a mute glow of ecstasy. Fate, he thought with reason, was most kind to him.
They are generally very old, always dirty, while the khansamah is as ancient as the bungalow. He either chatters senilely, or falls into the long trances of age. In both moods he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers to some Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and says that when he was in that Sahib's service not a khansamah in the Province could touch him.
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