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Page 6
"Alone upon the house-tops, to the north
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the north.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
"Below my feet the still bazaar is laid.
Far, far below, the weary camels lie--"
Holcombe laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had stopped half-way
down the hill on which stands the Bashaw's palace, and the whole of
Tangier lay below him like a great cemetery of white marble. The moon
was shining clearly over the town and the sea, and a soft wind from
the sandy farm-lands came to him and played about him like the
fragrance of a garden. Something moved in him that he did not
recognize, but which was strangely pleasant, and which ran to his
brain like the taste of a strong liqueur. It came to him that he was
alone among strangers, and that what he did now would be known but to
himself and to these strangers. What it was that he wished to do he
did not know, but he felt a sudden lifting up and freedom from
restraint. The spirit of adventure awoke in him and tugged at his
sleeve, and he was conscious of a desire to gratify it and put it to
the test.
"'Alone upon the house-tops,'" he began. Then he laughed and clambered
hurriedly down the steep hill-side. "It's the moonlight," he explained
to the blank walls and overhanging lattices, "and the place and the
music of the song. It might be one of the Arabian nights, and I Haroun
al Raschid. _And_ if I don't get back to the hotel I shall make a
fool of myself."
He reached the Albion very warm and breathless, with stumbling and
groping in the dark, and instead of going immediately to bed told the
waiter to bring him some cool drink out on the terrace of the
smoking-room. There were two men sitting there in the moonlight, and
as he came forward one of them nodded to him silently.
"Oh, good-evening, Mr. Meakim!" Holcombe said, gayly, with the spirit
of the night still upon him. "I've been having adventures." He
laughed, and stooped to brush the dirt from his knickerbockers and
stockings. "I went up to the palace to see the town by moonlight, and
tried to find my way back alone, and fell down three times."
Meakim shook his head gravely. "You'd better be careful at night,
sir," he said. "The governor has just said that the Sultan won't be
responsible for the lives of foreigners at night 'unless accompanied
by soldier and lantern.'"
"Yes, and the legations sent word that they wouldn't have it," broke
in the other man. "They said they'd hold him responsible anyway."
There was a silence, and Meakim moved in some slight uneasiness. "Mr.
Holcombe, do you know Mr. Carroll?" he said.
Carroll half rose from his chair, but Holcombe was dragging another
toward him, and so did not have a hand to give him.
"How are you, Carroll?" he said, pleasantly.
The night was warm, and Holcombe was tired after his rambles, and so
he sank back in the low wicker chair contentedly enough, and when the
first cool drink was finished he clapped his hands for another, and
then another, while the two men sat at the table beside him and
avoided such topics as would be unfair to any of them.
"And yet," said Holcombe, after the first half-hour had passed, "there
must be a few agreeable people here. I am sure I saw some very
nice-looking women to-day coming in from the fox-hunt. And very well
gotten up, too, in Karki habits. And the men were handsome,
decent-looking chaps--Englishmen, I think."
"Who does he mean? Were you at the meet to-day?" asked Carroll.
The Tammany chieftain said no, that he did not ride--not after foxes,
in any event. "But I saw Mrs. Hornby and her sister coming back," he
said. "They had on those linen habits."
"Well, now, there's a woman who illustrates just what I have been
saying," continued Carroll. "You picked her out as a self-respecting,
nice-looking girl--and so she is--but she wouldn't like to have to
tell all she knows. No, they are all pretty much alike. They wear
low-neck frocks, and the men put on evening dress for dinner, and they
ride after foxes, and they drop in to five-o'clock tea, and they all
play that they're a lot of gilded saints, and it's one of the rules of
the game that you must believe in the next man, so that he will
believe in you. I'm breaking the rules myself now, because I say
'they' when I ought to say 'we.' We're none of us here for our health,
Holcombe, but it pleases us to pretend we are. It's a sort of give and
take. We all sit around at dinner-parties and smile and chatter, and
those English talk about the latest news from 'town,' and how they
mean to run back for the season or the hunting. But they know they
don't dare go back, and they know that everybody at the table knows
it, and that the servants behind them know it. But it's more easy that
way. There's only a few of us here, and we've got to hang together or
we'd go crazy."
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