No More Learning

He was not going to Nuddea to see his Sahib die, and, perhaps to die
himself.

So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went down to Nuddea alone; the
other Doctor bidding him goodbye as one under sentence of death.

Eleven days later, he had joined his Memsahib; and the Bengal Government
had to borrow a fresh Doctor to cope with that epidemic at Nuddea. The
first importation lay dead in Chooadanga Dak-Bungalow.




TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE.

By the hoof of the Wild Goat up-tossed
From the Cliff where She lay in the Sun,
Fell the Stone To the Tarn where the daylight is lost;
So She fell from the light of the Sun,
And alone.

Now the fall was ordained from the first,
With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,
But the Stone Knows only Her life is accursed,
As She sinks in the depths of the Tarn,
And alone.

Oh, Thou who has builded the world,
Oh, Thou who hast lighted the Sun!
Oh, Thou who hast darkened the Tarn!
Judge Thou The Sin of the Stone that was hurled
By the Goat from the light of the Sun,
As She sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
Even now--even now--even now!
--From the Unpublished Papers of McIntosh Jellaludin.

"Say, is it dawn, is it dusk in thy Bower,
Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh be it night--be it--"

Here he fell over a little camel-colt that was sleeping in the Serai
where the horse-traders and the best of the blackguards from Central
Asia live; and, because he was very drunk indeed and the night was dark,
he could not rise again till I helped him. That was the beginning of my
acquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin. When a loafer, and drunk, sings
The Song of the Bower, he must be worth cultivating.
He got off the
camel's back and said, rather thickly:--"I--I--I'm a bit screwed, but a
dip in Loggerhead will put me right again; and I say, have you spoken to
Symonds about the mare's knees? "

Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away from us, close to
Mesopotamia, where you mustn't fish and poaching is impossible, and
Charley Symonds' stable a half mile further across the paddocks. It was
strange to hear all the old names, on a May night, among the horses
and camels of the Sultan Caravanserai. Then the man seemed to remember
himself and sober down at the same time. He leaned against the camel and
pointed to a corner of the Serai where a lamp was burning:--

"I live there," said he, "and I should be extremely obliged if you would
be good enough to help my mutinous feet thither; for I am more than
usually drunk--most--most phenomenally tight. But not in respect to my
head. 'My brain cries out against'--how does it go? But my head rides on
the--rolls on the dung-hill I should have said, and controls the qualm. "

I helped him through the gangs of tethered horses and he collapsed on
the edge of the verandah in front of the line of native quarters.

"Thanks--a thousand thanks! O Moon and little, little Stars! To think
that a man should so shamelessly. . . . Infamous liquor, too.