Plays of Near & Far by Lord Dunsany (top novels to read TXT) 📗

... is dead!

[A murmur is heard of men, at first mournful. It grows louder and louder and then breaks into these clear words.

Zarabardes is King! Zarabardes is King! Rejoice! Rejoice! Zarabardes is King! Zarabardes! Zarabardes! Zarabardes!

CURTAIN. THE FLIGHT OF THE QUEEN DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

The Prince of Zoon.
Prince Meliflor.
Queen Zoomzoomarma.
Lady Oozizi.
Oomuz, a Common Soldier.
The Glory of Ximenung.
The Overlord of Moomoomon.
Prince Huz.

Scene I

Time: June.

Scene: In the Palace of Zoorm; the Hall of the Hundred Princes.

The Princes sit at plain oaken tables with pewter mugs before them. They wear bright grass-green cloaks of silk; they might wear circlets of narrow silver with one large hyacinth petal rising from it at intervals of an inch.

Oomuz, a Common Soldier, huge and squat, with brown skin and dense black beard, stands just inside the doorway, holding a pike, guarding the golden treasure.

The golden treasure lies in a heap three or four feet high near the right back corner.

Sentries, also brown-skinned and bearded, carrying pikes, pass and repass outside the great doorway.

The Glory of Ximenung: Heigho, Moomoomon.

The Overlord of Moomoomon: Heigho, Glory of Ximenung.

Ximenung: Weary?

Moomoomon: Aye, weary.

Another: Heigho.

Prince Meliflor (sympathetically): What wearies you?

Moomoomon: The idle hours and the idle days. Heigho.

Others: Heigho.

Meliflor: Speak not against the idle hours, Moomoomon.

Moomoomon: Why then, lord of the sweet lands?

Meliflor: Because in idleness are all things, all things good.

Ximenung: Heigho, I am weary of the idle hours.

Moomoomon: You would work then?

Ximenung: No-o. That is not our destiny.

Meliflor: Let us be well contented with our lot. The idle hours are our sacred treasure.

Ximenung: Yes, I am well contented, and yet ...

Moomoomon (contemplatively): And yet ...

Ximenung: I sometimes dream that were it not for our glorious state, and this tradition of exalted ease, it might, it might be pleasant ...

Moomoomon: To toil, to labour, to raid the golden hoards.

Ximenung: Yes, Moomoomon.

Meliflor: Never! Never!

Others: No. No. No.

Another: And yet ...

Meliflor: No, never. We should lose our glorious ease, the heritage that none may question.

Ximenung: What heritage is that, Prince Meliflor?

Meliflor: It is all the earth. To labour is to lose it.

Moomoomon: If we could toil we should gain some spot of earth that our labour would seem to make our own. How happily the workers come home at evening.

Meliflor: It would be to lose all.

Prince of Zoon: How lose it, Meliflor?

Meliflor: To us alone the idle hours are given. The sky, the fields, the woods, the summer winds are for us alone. All others put the earth to uses. This or that field has this or that use; here one may go and another may not. They have each their bit of earth and become slaves to its purpose. But for us, ah! for us, is all; the gift of the idle hours.

Some: Hurrah! Hurrah for the idle hours.

Zoon: Heigho. The idle hours weary me.

Meliflor: They give us all the earth and sky to contemplate. Both are for us.

Moomoomon: True. Let us drink, and speak of the blue sky.

Meliflor (lifting mug): And all our glorious heritage.

Ximenung (putting hand to mug): Aye, it is glorious, and yet ...

[Enter the Raiders of the Golden Hoard with spears and, in the other hand, leather wallets the size of your fist; these they cast on the heap. Nuggets the size of big filberts escape from some so that the heap is partly leather and partly gold. These wallets should be filled with nuggets of lead, about the size described, not one lump of lead and not sawdust or rags. Nothing destroys illusion on the stage more than a cannon ball falling with a soft pat. They look scowlingly at the Princes.

[Exeunt the Raiders. The Princes have scarcely noticed them.

Meliflor: See how they waste the hours.

Ximenung: They have brought treasure from the Golden Hoard.

Zoon: Yes, from the Golden Hoard beyond the marshes. I went there once with old brown Oomuz there.

Meliflor: Of what avail is it to come back burdened thus? Has not the Queen more wealth than she'll ever need?

Moomoomon: Aye, the Queen needs nothing more.

Zoon: How can we know that?

Momoomon: Why not?

Zoon: The Queen obeys old impulses. Her sires are dead. Who knows whence those impulses come? How can we say what they are?

Moomoomon: She cannot need more wealth than what is here.

Meliflor: No, no, she cannot.

Zoon: She needs more, for she has bidden them go again to the Golden Hoards. Her impulses have demanded it.

Moomoomon: Then there is no reason in her impulses.

Zoon: They do not come from reason.

Moomoomon: So I said.

Zoon: They come from Fate.

Moomoomon: From Fate!

[There is a hush at this. Oomuz comes nearer and kneels down.

Oomuz: Oh, Masters, Masters. If there be anything greater, greater than the Queen, speak not of it, Masters, speak not its name.

Zoon: No, Oomuz. We need nothing greater.

Oomuz: The name frightened me, Mighty Highness.

Zoon: Yes, yes, Oomuz; there is only the Queen.

Moomoomon: No, there is nothing greater than the Queen, and she has no need of anything more than the treasure that he guards there.

Oomuz: There is one thing more.

Moomoomon: More? What is that?

Oomuz: There is one thing more. The Queen needs one thing more. This has been told us and we know.

Moomoomon: What is it?

Oomuz: How should we know that? None knows the need of the Queen.

[Oomuz returns to guard his heap.

Zoon: What think you, Oomuz? What think you is this need of the Queen?

[Oomuz shakes his head about three times. Prince of Zoon sighs.

Several Princes (together wearily): Heigho.

Melifor: Take comfort in our heritage, illustrious comrades. Come! We will drink to the sun.

Some: To the sun! To the sun! (They drink.)

Meliflor: To the golden idle hours! (He drinks.) Let us be worthy, glorious companions, of our exalted calling. Let us enjoy the days of idleness. Sing to us, mighty one of Zoon, as the idle hours go by. Sing us a song.

Moomoomon (idly): Yes, sing to us.

Zoon: As you all know, I can but hum. But I will hum you a song that I heard yesterday; very strange it was; sung in the meadows by two that were not of our people; sung in the evening. I heard it as I loitered home from the meadows beyond the marshes. There is no ease in the song, and yet ...

Moomoomon: Hum it to us.

Zoon: They sang it together, the two that were not of our people.

[He hums a song. They all lift up their heads from their listlessness.

Meliflor (wonderingly): That is a song that is new.

Zoon: Yes, it is new to me.

Meliflor: It is like an old song.

Zoon: Yes, perhaps it is old.

Meliflor: What is the song?

Zoon: It tells of love.

The Princes: Ah-h!

[They seem to wake as though young and strong out of sleep. There is a great commotion among them. The sentries outside are utterly unmoved. Oomuz, without sharing any of the excitement of the Princes, now nods his head solemnly as he had once shaken it.

Moomoomon: Love! It must have been that that I felt that day in the twilight as I came back round the peak of Zing-gee Mountain.

Ximenung: You felt it, Moomoomon? Tell us.

Moomoomon: All the air seemed gold, seemed gold of a sudden. Through it I saw fair fields, glittering green far down, glimpsed between clumps of the heather. The gold was all about them, yet they shone with their own fair colours. Ah, how can I tell you all I saw? My feet seemed scarce to touch the slope of the mountain; I too seemed one with the golden air in which all things were shining.

Ximenung: And this was Love?

Moomoomon: I know not. It was some strange new thing. It was strange and new like this song.

Meliflor: Perhaps, it was some other strange new thing.

Moomoomon: Perhaps. I know not.

Zoon: No. It was Love.

Moomoomon: And then that evening in the golden light I knew the purpose of Earth and why all things are.

Ximenung: What is the purpose, Moomoomon?

Moomoomon: I know not. I was content. I troubled not to remember.

Zoon: It was love.

Ximenung: Let us love.

Others: Aye.

Huz: Aye, that is best of all.

Meliflor: No, Princes. The best is idleness. Out of the idle hours all good things come.

Huz: I will love. That is best.

Meliflor: It is like all things, the gift of the idle hours. The workers never love. Their fancies are fastened to the work they do, and do not roam towards love.

All: Love! Let us love.

Meliflor: We will love in idleness and praise the idle hours.

Ximenung: Whom will you love, lord of the shimmering fields?

Meliflor: I have but to show myself loitering by lanes in the evening.

Ximenung: I too will be there.

Meliflor: And when they see me ...

Ximenung: They will see me too ...

Meliflor (rising): Behold me.

Ximenung: So I do.

Meliflor: Will they look towards you when this is there?

Ximenung: Are birch-trees seen at dawn fairer than I?

Meliflor: Behold me; not a poplar is straighter, not a flower is fairer. I will loiter along the lanes at evening.

[He draws his sword. Ximenung does the same. Moomoomon draws his too and places it between them.

Moomoomon: Be at peace. I will go to the lanes, and there need be no quarrel between you, for I....

Others: No, no, no....

Huz: We will all go.

Another: We will all love. Hurrah for love.

[They have all risen. They wave their swords on high, not threatening each other. Zoon alone has not risen.

Moomoomon (to Zoon): You do not speak, Prince of Zoon. Will you not love along the idle hours?

Zoon: Yes, yes. I love.

Moomoomon: Come then to the lanes to loiter. It draws towards evening. Let us all come to the lanes, where the honeysuckle is hanging.

Zoon: I love not in the lanes.

Moomoomon: Not in the lanes? Then...!

Others: Not in the lanes?

Zoon: I love her than whom there is no greater on earth—(Some Princes: Ah!) unless it be that name that frightens Oomuz.

Moomoomon: He loves the...!

Ximenung: The ...

Meliflor: The Queen!

[Oomuz nods his head again.

Zoon: The Queen.

Moomoomon: If the Queen knew such a thing she would flee from the palace.

Zoon: I would pursue.

Moomoomon: She would go by Aether Mountain, where her mother went once before her.

Zoon: I would follow.

Huz: We would all follow.

Meliflor: I would follow too. I would dance after her down the little street: the bright heels of my shoes would twinkle: my cloak would float out behind me: I would pursue her and call her name, beyond the street and over the moor as far as Aether Mountain: but I would not come up with her: that would be too daring.

Zoon: Love is not a toy, Prince Meliflor. Love is no less than a mood of Destiny.

Meliflor: Pooh! We must enjoy the idle hours that are for us alone.

Zoon: There will be no idle hours on Aether Mountain,