When the man finally withdrew, and the Mudir after him, I was in no mood to go to bed. They had opened to me their ancient world, with all its poetry and mystery, and I did not want to lose it again. I could see it stretching dimly beyond the windows where the water-wheels went moaning under the moon. I went out into it. The night was—you have no idea what those nights could be. They had such a way of swallowing up the squalidness of things, and bringing out all their melancholy magic. The rose season was at its height, and the air was one perfume from the hidden gardens. Then the nightingales were at that heart-breaking music of theirs. And the moon! It wasn't one of those glaring round things, like a coachman's button or a butcher's boy with the mumps, by which young ladies are commonly put into spasms; but it was an old wasted one, with such a light!
It was all the more extraordinary because not a creature was about—except a man who lay asleep on the ground, not far from the door. Apparently they dropped off wherever they happened to be, down there, and I used to envy them for it. I stood still for a while, in the shadow of the house, taking it all in. Don't you know, it happens once in a while that you have a mood, and that your surroundings come up to it? It doesn't happen very often, either—at least, to workaday people like us. So I stood there, looking and listening and breathing. And when I saw the edge of the shadow of the house crumble up at one place, without any visible cause, and creep out into the moonlight, I—I only looked at it. Nothing had any visible cause in that strange world of mine, and I watched the slowly lengthening finger of shadow with the passivity of a man who has seen too many wonders to wonder any more. But then I made out a darker darkness winding back toward the house. And—I don't know—I thought of the man on the ground. I looked at him.
It was my camel-driver, dead as Darius, with the blood running out of a hole in his back like water out of a spout. For the moment I was still too far away from every day to be startled, or even very much surprised. It was only a part of that mysterious world, with its mysterious people and mysterious ways that I never could understand. What was he doing there dead, who had been so full of life a little while before? Was it one of his jokes? The night was the most enchanting you could imagine, the air was heady with the breath of rose-gardens, the nightingales were singing in the trees (down in the valley I heard, low, low, the weary water-wheels), and here was the prince of story-tellers with his tongue stopped forever, and the blood of him making a snaky black trail across the moonlight....
What happened next? My dear fellow, you remind me of these kids who will never let you finish their story! Nothing happened next. That was the beauty of it. I guess I got one pretty good case of the jim-jams after a while, and when I got through wondering whether I was going to be elected next, I began to wonder whether they wouldn't think I'd done it. Of course, I had done it, as a matter of fact, and that didn't tend to composure of mind. Neither did my speculations as to what the Mudir might or might not have noticed when he left me that evening. But, if you will believe it, nobody ever lifted a finger. The next morning the caravan was gone and apparently everything was the same as before. If anything, they were more decent than before. That was the worst of it. I don't believe I'd have minded so much if they'd stoned me and ridden me out on a rail and set the Government after me and raised the devil generally. I should at least have felt less at sea. As it was—hello, there's Carmignani! Let's take him over to Tokatlian's.
THE UNREMEMBERED
FRAGMENTS OF A LOST MEMORY
BY FLORENCE WILKINSON
Where have they gone, the unremembered things,
The hours, the faces,
The trumpet-call, the wild boughs of white spring?
Would I might pluck you from forbidden spaces,
All ye, the vanished tenants of my places!
Stay but one moment, speak that I may hear,
Swift passer-by!
The wind of your strange garments in my ear
Catches the heart like a belovèd cry
From lips, alas, forgotten utterly.