Plays of Near Far | Page 6

away from his lips,
but the KING is rigid and his arm cannot be moved. He steps back
lifting up his hands.
POLITICIAN: Oh-h!
[Exit. You hear him announcing solemnly

King Hamaran ... 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