The Exiles and Other Stories | Page 6

had laughed and whom he had
rather pitied for having made him do so, and women he had looked at
distantly as of a kind he might understand when his work was over and
he wished to be amused. The young girls to whom he was in the habit
of pouring out his denunciations of evil, and from whom he was
accustomed to receive advice and moral support, he could not place in
this landscape. He felt uneasily that they would not allow him to enjoy
it his own way; they would consider the Moor historically as the
invader of Catholic Europe, and would be shocked at the lack of proper
sanitation, and would see the mud. As for himself, he had risen above
seeing the mud. He looked up now at the broken line of the roof-tops
against the blue sky, and when a hooded figure drew back from his
glance he found himself murmuring the words of an Eastern song he
had read in a book of Indian stories:

"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