The maid left the room. The dusk began to fall softly through the air, soft as velvet after the rain. The great residency stood still as death amid the darkness of its giant banyans. And the lamps were not yet lit. In the front-verandah, Van Oudijck, by himself, lay in his pyjamas on a wicker chair, drinking tea. In the garden, the dense shadows were gathering like strips of immaterial velvet falling heavily from the trees.
“Lamp-boy!”
“Yes, mem-sahib.”
“Come, light the lamps! Why do you begin so late? Light the lamp in my bedroom first....”
She went to the bathroom. She went past the long row of store-rooms and servants’ rooms which shut off the back-garden. She looked up at the banyan-tree in whose top branches she had heard the little souls moaning. The branches did not move, there was not a breath of wind, the air was sultry and oppressive with a threatening storm, with rain too heavy to fall. In the bathroom, Oorip was lighting the little lamp.
“Have you brought everything, Oorip?”
“Yes, mem-sahib.”
“Haven’t you forgotten the big bottle with the white toilet-water?”
“Isn’t this it, mem-sahib?”
“Yes, that’s right.... But do give me a fine towel for my face in future. I’m always telling you to give me a fine towel. I hate these coarse ones....”