Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/24

188 that steady bright star on the hilltop had set, and the dim light of the new moon was stealthily entering the room through the open window as if shrinking from the intrusion.

I saw no one but still I felt distinctly as if some one was gently pushing me. As I awoke she said not a word, but beckoned me with her five fingers bedecked with rings to follow her cautiously. I got up noiselessly, and though not a soul save myself was there in the countless apartments of that deserted palace with its slumbering sounds and waking echoes I feared at every step lest any one should wake up. Most of the rooms of that palace were always kept closed and I had never entered them.

I followed breathless and with noiseless steps my invisible guide—I cannot now say where. What endless dark and narrow passages, long corridors, silent and solemn audience-chambers and close secret cells I crossed!

Though I could not see my fair guide, her form was not invisible to my mind's eye. An Arab girl, her arms hard and smooth as marble visible through her loose sleeves, a thin veil falling on her face from the fringe of her cap, and a curved dagger at her waist.

Methought that one of the thousand and one Arabian Nights had been wafted to me from the world of romance and that at the dead of night I was wending through the dark narrow alleys of slumbering Bagdad on my way to a trysting-place fraught with peril.

At last my fair guide abruptly stopped before a deep blue screen and seemed to point to something below. There was nothing there, but a sudden dread froze the blood in my heart—methought I saw there on the floor at the foot of the screen a terrible negro eunuch dressed in rich brocade sitting and dosingdozing [sic] with outstretched legs, a naked sword on his lap. My fair guide lightly tripped over his legs and held up a fringe of the screen. I could catch a glimpse of a part of the room spread with a Persian carpet—some one was sitting inside on a bed—I could not see her, but only caught a glimpse of two exquisite feet in gold-embroidered slippers hanging out from loose saffron-coloured paijamas and placed idly on the orange-coloured velvet carpet. On one side there was a bluish crystal tray on which a few apples, pears, oranges and bunches of grapes in plenty, two small cups and a gold-tinted decanter were evidently awaiting the guest. A fragrant intoxicating vapour issuing from a strange sort of incense burning within almost overpowered my senses.

As with a trembling heart I made an attempt to step across the outstretched legs of the eunuch he woke up suddenly with a start and the sword fell from his lap with a sharp clang on the marble floor.

A terrific scream made me violently start and I saw I was sitting on that camp bedstead of mine sweating heavily and the crescent moon looking pale in the morning rays like a weary sleepless patient at dawn, and our crazy Meher Ali crying out as was his daily custom, "Stand back! Stand back!!" while going round the lonely road.

Such was the abrupt close of one of my Arabian Nights but there were yet a thousand nights left.

Then followed a great discord between my days and nights. During the day I would go to my work worn and tired cursing the bewitching night and her empty dreams, but as night came my daily life with its bonds and shackles of work would appear a petty, false, ludicrous vanity.

After nightfall I was caught and overwhelmed in the snare of a strange intoxication. I would be then transformed into some unknown individual of some bygone age figuring in some unwritten history; and the short English coat and tight breeches would not suit me in the least. With a red velvet cap on my head, loose paijamas, an embroidered vest, a long flowing silk gown, and coloured handkerchiefs scented with attar, I would complete my elaborate toilet, and sit on a high-cushioned chair, my cigarette replaced by a many-coiled narghileh filled with rose water as if in eager expectation of a strange meeting with the beloved one.

As the gloom of the night deepened, the marvellous incidents that would go on unfolding themselves I have no power to describe. I felt as if in the curious apartments of that vast edifice flew about in a sudden gust of the vernal breeze the fragments of a charming story, which I could follow for some distance, but of which I could never see the end. But all the same I