Plays of Near Far | Page 5

answer the question. They would not confess.
KING: What said they at last?
FIRST QUESTIONER: O, the King's Majesty, they but spake idly.
KING: What said they?
FIRST QUESTIONER: O, the King's Majesty, they said nought fitting.
KING: They muttered so that no man heard them clearly?
FIRST QUESTIONER: They spake. But it was not fitting.
KING: Did they speak of small things happening long ago?
FIRST QUESTIONER: O, the King's Majesty, it was not fitting.
KING: What said they? Speak!
FIRST QUESTIONER: The man you gave to me, O King, said: "No man that knew the counsels of the gods, who alone see future things, would say the gods advised King Hamaran ill when they bade him drink out of a poisoned cup." Then I put the question straightly and he died.
KING: The gods! He said it was the gods!... And the other?
SECOND QUESTIONER: He also said the same, O the King's Majesty.
KING: Both said the same. They were questioned in different chambers?
FIRST QUESTIONER: In different chambers, O King. I questioned mine in the Red Chamber.
KING (to SECOND QUESTIONER): And yours?
SECOND QUESTIONER: In the Chamber of Rats.
KING: Begone!
[Exeunt QUESTIONERS.
So ... It was the gods.
[The acolytes are crouched upon the floor. He does not notice them since they ceased to moan.
The gods! With what dark and dreadful thing have they clouded the future?
Well, I will face it! But what is it? Is it one of those things a strong man can bear? Or is it----?
The future is more terrible than the grave, that has its one secret only.
No man, he said, could say that the gods had advised me ill when they bade me drink out of a poisoned cup.
What have the gods seen? What dreadful work have they overlooked where Destiny sits alone, making evil years? The gods, he said, who alone see future things.
Yes, I have known men who never were warned by the gods, and did not drink poison, and came upon evil days, suddenly like a ship upon rocks no mariner knows. Yes, poison to some of them would have been very precious.
The gods have warned me and I have not hearkened, and must go on alone: must enter that strange country of the future whose paths are so dark to man ... to meet a doom there that the gods have seen.
The gods have seen it! How shall I thwart the gods? How fight against the shapers of the hills?
Would that I had been warned. Would I had heeded when they bade me drink of the cup the Ambassador said was poisoned.
[Far off is heard that merry bar of music blown by the AMBASSADOR'S HERALD on his horn.]
Is it too late?
There it stands yet with its green emeralds winking.
[He clutches it and looks down into it.
How like to wine it is, which is full of dreams. It is silent and dreamy like the gods, whose dreams we are.
Only a moment in their deathless minds: then the dream passes.
[He lifts up his arm and drinks it seated upon his throne with his head back and the great cup before his face. The audience begin to wonder when he will put it down. Still he remains in the attitude of a drinker. The acolytes begin to peer eagerly. Still he remains upright with the great cup to his lips. The acolytes patter away and the KING is left alone.
[Enter the KING'S POLITICIAN hurriedly. He goes up to the KING and seizes his right arm and tries to drag the cup 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 PERSON?
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: