Edgar Hoffmann Trooper Price

“ Look upon wine as often as you wish, but beware of a Bokhara when it is red—red as the blood of slaughter—red as the embers of a plundered city—a redness charged with the quartered octagons of Turkestan—for in the end you will become enslaved to the silky splendor that once graced the tent floor of a Tekke prince. . . .
Diane was right; though Diane never suspected, even dimly, what in the end really did happen to Hammersmith Clarke. For, naturally enough, neither she nor anyone else saw or heard the Yellow Girl; that is, no one but Clarke: and he saw and heard too much. ”

“ And thus it was that Diane learned that to live in Clarke's apartment would be to become an accessory to those precious fabrics that were his hard-ridden hobby; for no woman would fit Into the dim, smoky shadows of that titled salon unless bejeweled and diaphanously veiled she could dance with curious paces and gestures beneath the sullen glow of the great brazen mosque lamp as became the favorite of a khan in far-off Tartary. ”

“ The end of life more vainly lived than the first. I knew that I was leaving this avatar after having lived but one stolen evening. So I sent a trusted servant to carry this very rug to Meshed. For when we met in the garden, you were hunting rugs for him who now seeks them for your delight. And I knew that he would find you if you still lived. Thus it is that I have crossed the Border, and stand before you as I did once before—this time on that wry rug which I wove centuries ago, while living in hope of another meeting and in dread of the bowstring I knew would in the end find me. ”

“ But unheard-of things happen in Turkestan; and while one may pause for an evening's glamor beside some moon-kissed fountain in the valley of Zarabshan, and then march on, forgetting, there is that which does not forget, being undying and everlasting; so that though forgotten, it reaches forth across time and space, not only clinging to the pile of a rug from Samarcand, but resorting even to express trucks to carry it the last step toward capturing the forgetful one. ”

“ Catch yourself losing yourself in the thrill of its three hundred years, wondering that all the ecstasy ever lost in the entire world could be imprisoned in a rug. Then see your one and only and otherwise adequate husband sitting of an evening, hours at a stretch, staring at it and dreaming of all the richness and glamor he's lost through becoming civilized, learning to wear shoes, and having only one woman, and she his wife, about the house. ”

“ Thus it was in the beginning——"
"Ah . . . now it does come back to me," interrupted Clarke, "as in a dream dimly remembered. How compactly and stiflingly they would wrap me in a bale of silk and carry me past the guards and into your presence. And by what devious routes I would leave you . . . yes, and how painlessly swift is the stroke of a simitar. . . ."
The Yellow Girl shuddered.
"A simitar truly wielded is really nothing, after all," continued Clarke. "I might have been sawn asunder between planks. . . . ”

“ So I started weaving, and completed my task before they suspected us and the bowstring did its work. My soul, my self, being woven cunningly and curiously into silk rich enough to hang on the wall of the khan's palace, waited patiently and wondered whether you and I could have our day again. ”

“ Good Lord, Diane, what's this?"
"You heard me. You used to be half human, but now you're utterly impossible. And if you can't show me a little attention, I'm leaving here and now. For the past many weeks you've acted like a model for a petrified forest. Ever since that yellow beast——"
"Yellow beast?"
"Exactly! That damned rug is driving me crazy——"
"Is, or has driven?" suggested Clarke. "Lies there like a beast of prey just ready to wake. And you sit there, night after night, staring at it until you fall asleep in your chair. ”

“ For Diane's friend Louise had been no less garrulous than she should have been, so that the habitues of the French Quarter were prepared for the news.
And then it was said that to gain admittance to Clarke's studio one must know the code of taps whereby someone who at times left a certain side door bearing bottles of Pernod announced his arrival; for Clarke answered neither doorbell nor telephone. The vendor of Pernod was certainly a discreet person ”