He had recognized that laugh. It was the laugh of Merolchazzar.
Ascobaruch crept to the wall and cautiously poked his head over it. The
sight he saw drove the blood from his face and left him white and
haggard.
The King and the Grand Vizier were playing a foursome against the Pro
and the High Priest of Hec, and the Vizier had just laid the High
Priest a dead stymie.
Ascobaruch tottered to the chariot.
'Take me back,' he muttered, pallidly. 'I've forgotten something!'
* * * * *
And so golf came to Oom, and with it prosperity unequalled in the whole
history of the land. Everybody was happy. There was no more
unemployment. Crime ceased. The chronicler repeatedly refers to it in
his memoirs as the Golden Age. And yet there remained one man on whom
complete felicity had not descended. It was all right while he was
actually on the Linx, but there were blank, dreary stretches of the
night when King Merolchazzar lay sleepless on his couch and mourned
that he had nobody to love him.
Of course, his subjects loved him in a way. A new statue had been
erected in the palace square, showing him in the act of getting out of
casual water. The minstrels had composed a whole cycle of up-to-date
songs, commemorating his prowess with the mashie. His handicap was down
to twelve. But these things are not all. A golfer needs a loving wife,
to whom he can describe the day's play through the long evenings. And
this was just where Merolchazzar's life was empty. No word had come
from the Princess of the Outer Isles, and, as he refused to be put off
with just-as-good substitutes, he remained a lonely man.
But one morning, in the early hours of a summer day, as he lay sleeping
after a disturbed night, Merolchazzar was awakened by the eager hand of
the Lord High Chamberlain, shaking his shoulder.
'Now what?' said the King.
'Hoots, your Majesty! Glorious news! The Princess of the Outer Isles
waits without--I mean wi'oot!'
The King sprang from his couch.
'A messenger from the Princess at last!'
'Nay, sire, the Princess herself--that is to say,' said the Lord
Chamberlain, who was an old man and had found it hard to accustom
himself to the new tongue at his age, 'her ain sel'! And believe me, or
rather, mind ah'm telling ye,' went on the honest man, joyfully, for he
had been deeply exercised by his monarch's troubles, 'her Highness is
the easiest thing to look at these eyes hae ever seen. And you can say
I said it!'
'She is beautiful?'
'Your majesty, she is, in the best and deepest sense of the word, a
pippin!'
King Merolchazzar was groping wildly for his robes.
'Tell her to wait!' he cried. 'Go and amuse her. Ask her riddles! Tell
her anecdotes! Don't let her go. Say I'll be down in a moment. Where in
the name of Zoroaster is our imperial mesh-knit underwear?'
* * * * *
