I went into the next room and the
daylight
streamed through the open
door.
door.
Kipling - Poems
If a man said to a confirmed
dak-bungalow-haunter:--"There is a corpse in the next room, and there's
a mad girl in the next but one, and the woman and man on that camel
have just eloped from a place sixty miles away," the hearer would not
disbelieve because he would know that nothing is too wild, grotesque, or
horrible to happen in a dak-bungalow.
This credulity, unfortunately, extends to ghosts. A rational person
fresh from his own house would have turned on his side and slept. I
did not. So surely as I was given up as a bad carcass by the scores
of things in the bed because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, so
surely did I hear every stroke of a long game at billiards played in the
echoing room behind the iron-barred door. My dominant fear was that the
players might want a marker. It was an absurd fear; because creatures
who could play in the dark would be above such superfluities. I only
know that that was my terror; and it was real.
After a long, long while the game stopped, and the door banged. I slept
because I was dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred to have kept
awake. 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.
I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open
door. I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have played Black
Pool with the owner of the big Black Pool down below.
"Has this place always been a dak-bungalow? " I asked.
"No," said the khansamah. "Ten or twenty years ago, I have forgotten how
long, it was a billiard room. "
"A how much? "
"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. "
"Do you remember anything about the Sahibs? "
"It is long ago, but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man and always
angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:--'Mangal Khan,
brandy-pani do,' and I filled the glass, and he bent over the table to
strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table, and his
spectacles came off, and when we--the Sahibs and I myself--ran to lift
him he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha, he was a strong Sahib!
dak-bungalow-haunter:--"There is a corpse in the next room, and there's
a mad girl in the next but one, and the woman and man on that camel
have just eloped from a place sixty miles away," the hearer would not
disbelieve because he would know that nothing is too wild, grotesque, or
horrible to happen in a dak-bungalow.
This credulity, unfortunately, extends to ghosts. A rational person
fresh from his own house would have turned on his side and slept. I
did not. So surely as I was given up as a bad carcass by the scores
of things in the bed because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, so
surely did I hear every stroke of a long game at billiards played in the
echoing room behind the iron-barred door. My dominant fear was that the
players might want a marker. It was an absurd fear; because creatures
who could play in the dark would be above such superfluities. I only
know that that was my terror; and it was real.
After a long, long while the game stopped, and the door banged. I slept
because I was dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred to have kept
awake. 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.
I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open
door. I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have played Black
Pool with the owner of the big Black Pool down below.
"Has this place always been a dak-bungalow? " I asked.
"No," said the khansamah. "Ten or twenty years ago, I have forgotten how
long, it was a billiard room. "
"A how much? "
"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. "
"Do you remember anything about the Sahibs? "
"It is long ago, but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man and always
angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:--'Mangal Khan,
brandy-pani do,' and I filled the glass, and he bent over the table to
strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table, and his
spectacles came off, and when we--the Sahibs and I myself--ran to lift
him he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha, he was a strong Sahib!
