Zabra:
We shall indeed be poor.
Chamberlain:
A little gold perhaps from evil-doers for justice. Or a little money to decide the dispute of some righteous wealthy man; but no more till the King returns, whom God prosper.
Zabra:
God increase him. Will you yet try to detain him?
Chamberlain:
No. When he comes by with his retinue and escort I will walk beside his horse and tell him that a progress through the desert will well impress the Arabs with his splendour and turn their hearts towards him. And I will speak privily to some captain at the rear of the escort and he shall afterwards speak to the chief commander that he may lose the camel-track in a few days' time and take the King and his followers to wander in the desert and so return by chance to Thalanna again. And it may yet be well with us. We will wait here till they come by.
Zabra:
Will the chief commander do this thing certainly?
Chamberlain:
Yes, he will be one Thakbar, a poor man and a righteous.
Zabra:
But if he be not Thakbar but some greedy man who demands more gold than we would give to Thakbar?
Chamberlain:
Why, then we must give him even what he demands, and God will punish his greed.
Zabra:
He must come past us here.
Chamberlain:
Yes, he must come this way. He will summon the cavalry from the Saloia Samang.
Zabra:
It will be nearly dark before they can come.
Chamberlain:
No, he is in great haste. He will pass before sunset. He will make them mount at once.
Zabra: [looking off R.]
I do not see stir at the Saloia.
Chamberlain: [looking, too] No-no. I do not see. He will make a stir.
[As they look a man comes through the doorway wearing a coarse
brown cloak which falls over his forehead. Exit furtively L.]
What man is that? He has gone down to the camels.
Zabra:
He has given a piece of money to one of the camel-drivers.
Chamberlain:
See, he has mounted.
Zabra:
Can it have been the King!
[Voice off L. "Ho-Yo! Ho-Yay!"]
Chamberlain:
It is only some camel-driver going into the desert. How glad his voice sounds.
Zabra:
The siroc will swallow him.
Chamberlain:
What-if it were the King!
Zabra:
Why, if it were the King we should starve for a year.
[One year elapses between the first and second acts.]
Act II
[The same scene.]
[The King, wrapped in a camel-driver's cloak, sits by Eznarza, a
gypsy of the desert.]
King:
Now I have known the desert and dwelt in the tents of the Arabs.
Eznarza:
There is no land like the desert and like the Arabs no people.
King:
It is all over and done; I return to the walls of my fathers.
Eznarza:
Time cannot put it away; I go back to the desert that nursed me.
King:
Did you think in those days on the sands, or among the tents in the mornings, that my year would ever end, and I be brought away by strength of my word to the prisoning of a palace?
Eznarza:
I knew that Time would do it, for my people have learned the way of him.
King:
Is it then Time that has mocked our futile prayers? Is he then greater than God that he has laughed at our praying?
Eznarza:
We may not say that he is greater than God. Yet we prayed that our own year might not pass away. God could not save it.
King:
Yes, yes. We prayed that prayer. All men would laugh at it.
Eznarza:
The prayer was not laughable. Only he that is lord of the years is obdurate. If a man prayed for life to a furious, merciless Sultan well might the Sultan's slaves laugh. Yet it is not laughable to pray for life.
King:
Yes, we are slaves of Time. To-morrow brings the princess who comes from Tharba. We must bow our heads.
Eznarza:
My people say that Time lives in the desert. He lies there in the sun.
King:
No, no, not in the desert. Nothing alters there.
Eznarza:
My people say that the desert is his country. He smites not his own country, my people say. But he overwhelms all other lands of the world.
King:
Yes, the desert is always the same, even the littlest rocks of it.
Eznarza:
They say that he loves the Sphinx and does not harm her. They say that he does not dare to harm the Sphinx. She has borne him many gods whom the infidels worship.
King:
Their father is more terrible than all the false gods.
Eznarza:
O, that he had but spared our little year.
King:
He destroys all things utterly.
Eznarza:
There is a little child of man that is mightier than he, and who saves the world from Time.
King:
Who is this little child that is mightier than Time? Is it Love that is mightier?
Eznarza:
No, not Love.
King:
If he conquers even Love then none are mightier.
Eznarza:
He scares Love away with weak white hairs and with wrinkles. Poor little Love, poor Love, Time scares him away.
King:
What is this child of man that can conquer Time and that is braver than Love?
Eznarza:
Even Memory.
King:
Yes. I will call to him when the wind is from the desert and the locusts are beaten against my obdurate walls. I will call to him more when I cannot see the desert and cannot hear the wind of it.
Eznarza:
He shall bring back our year to us that Time cannot destroy. Time cannot slaughter it if Memory says no. It is reprieved, though banished. We shall often see it though a little far off and all its hours and days shall dance to us and go by one by one and come back and dance again.
King:
Why, that is true. They shall come back to us. I had thought that they that work miracles whether in Heaven or Earth were unable to do one thing. I thought that they could not bring back days again when once they had fallen into the hands of Time.
Eznarza:
It is a trick that Memory can do. He comes up softly in the town or the desert, wherever a few men are, like the strange dark conjurors who sing to snakes, and he does his trick before them, and does it again and again.
King:
We will often make him bring the old days back when you are gone to your people and I am miserably wedded to the princess coming from Tharba.
Eznarza:
They will come with sand on their feet from the golden, beautiful desert; they will come with a long-gone sunset each one over his head. Their lips will laugh with the olden evening voices.
King:
It is nearly noon. It is nearly noon. It is nearly noon.
Eznarza:
Why, we part then.
King:
O, come into the city and be Queen there. I will send its princess back again to Tharba. You shall be Queen in Thalanna.
Eznarza:
I go now back to my people. You will wed the princess from Tharba on the morrow. You have said it. I have said it.
King:
O, that I had not given my word to return.