The King of Alsander

by James Elroy Flecker

Vorza left him, and for a moment he stood alone and looked round on the scene of revel, and at that moment the uproar of gross feeders and drinkers seemed to pause a second, drowned in the vast fullness of the jasmine night. Then the musicians began from their bower among the shadowy plane trees—glorious musicians, and so glorious a music that not a man would dare to dance to it, for all that the orders were that none should wait for the Kong. All listened immobile: only the Japanese lights and those further lights the stars dared to start off dancing to such a tune. All the new power and subtlety of modern music seemed to have blended with the grand traditions of olden days to make this lovely melody: yet the melody was a waltz—a waltz-tune that the simplest could understand and that set the body dancing. Another instant and the spell broke: the music became human and the whole square which the carpenters had turned into a vast dancing floor, was alive with couples, and seemed itself to turn.

And the great sense of the unreality of the world again took possession of Norman. It seemed to him that he was a King indeed but a true King, the King in a fairy story, and might do what he will. If he was to play this splendid part, he would not play as a modern King—a tired, frock-coated slave of wearisome Ministers. He would be a King of Yvetot, of Atlantis, of the Indian Isles. He would; dance with Peronella—was it not the old! custom that he should dance with the fairest of his subjects? Would he not be the more beloved for his boldness? If he were not, what matter? The girl should be his mistress that night; to his great golden room he would lead her, and for one night he would celebrate Aphrodite. Was it not for this that she had been sent by destiny to meet him—swinging her pails beside the spring on that immortal morning? Was it not for this one night that he had played the supremest farce that ever a man played?

He started to find her, motioning away those that would accompany him. He soon caught sight of her, a little way off seated alone on a bench, as though she awaited him, and looking towards him with her eyes shining in the light of the lamp. His heart beat, and he trembled as he had never done through all his play-acting. He knew still that to steal a maiden's honour was a greater enterprise than to ravish a throne. He knew he had but one step further to take toward the girl, who sat there trembling with love to receive him. His foot was light on the ground to take that step—for what to a King is all the world?

Yet at that moment a hand was laid on his arm to arrest him. He looked round, and saw Arnolfo. The boy was clothed as ever in Alsandrian dress but of a darker hue: he was cloaked, and the silver buckles of his belt gleamed beneath the rich and sombre mantle. In this raiment, at such an hour, he looked paler than the moon, and strangely moved, yet resolute as death.

Norman knew why Arnolfo had laid the hand on his arm: he saw the will and determination on the boy's face: he knew that his scheme was known, and that it was to be frustrated. He swung round on his heel. "Leave me!" he said with passion, but his voice was not that of a King who rules the world, but of an angry boy.

"Did I not tell you to keep from women, my King," pursued Arnolfo. "Surely I am only just in time."

"It is too late! Your dramatic interventions are useless. I go where I please. You should not have left me in the lurch all these days if you wished to remain my mentor. I am master now. Leave me: we are not unobserved: you are making me ridiculous before my subjects."

"My Bang, I implore you as a friend, come away with me," said Arnolfo in a voice strangely passionate.

"A friend are you? You have made a fool of me for ever. I have got to play-act all my life. You have stolen from me my love, my liberty and my youth. You have left me alone to carry through the most perilous portion of this mad enterprise, and now, when I want to rescue a few moments of joy from the ruin of my life, you say, 'Friend! Friend!' Let me go, I tell you! Let me enjoy the glory of existence for one hour before you shut me in your dismal prison of lies for ever!"

And Norman pointed to the grim, dark, towering walls of the palace of Kradenda.