No More Learning

The floor was of worn brick, the walls were filthy, and
the windows were nearly black with grime. 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. 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. 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. He had forgotten the
other word, I suppose.

While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, I settled myself
down, after exploring the dak-bungalow.
There were three rooms, beside
my own, which was a corner kennel, each giving into the other through
dingy white doors fastened with long iron bars. The bungalow was a very
solid one, but the partition walls of the rooms were almost jerry-built
in their flimsiness. Every step or bang of a trunk echoed from my room
down the other three, and every footfall came back tremulously from the
far walls. For this reason I shut the door. There were no lamps--only
candles in long glass shades. An oil wick was set in the bathroom.

For bleak, unadulterated misery that dak-bungalow was the worst of
the many that I had ever set foot in. There was no fireplace, and
the windows would not open; so a brazier of charcoal would have been
useless. The rain and the wind splashed and gurgled and moaned round the
house, and the toddy palms rattled and roared.

Half a dozen jackals went through the compound singing, and a hyena
stood afar off and mocked them. A hyena would convince a Sadducee of the
Resurrection of the Dead--the worst sort of Dead. 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. It was just the sort of dinner and evening to make
a man think of every single one of his past sins, and of all the others
that he intended to commit if he lived.

Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy. The lamp in the
bath-room threw the most absurd shadows into the room, and the wind was
beginning to talk nonsense.

Just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-sucking I heard the
regular--"Let--us--take--and--heave--him--over" grunt of doolie-bearers
in the compound.