At present, Oom being a conservative country, the worship of the new god had not attracted the public in great numbers. In fact, except for the Grand Vizier, who, always a faithful follower of his sovereign’s fortunes, had taken to Gowf from the start, the courtiers held aloof to a man. But the Vizier had thrown himself into the new worship with such vigour and earnestness that it was not long before he won from the King the title of Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four Handicap Except on Windy Days when It Goes Up to Thirty—a title which in ordinary conversation was usually abbreviated to The Dub.
All these new titles, it should be said, were, so far as the courtiers were concerned, a fruitful source of discontent. There were black looks and mutinous whispers. The laws of precedence were being disturbed, and the courtiers did not like it. It jars a man who for years has had his social position all cut and dried—a man, to take an instance at random, who, as Second Deputy Shiner of the Royal Hunting Boots, knows that his place is just below the Keeper of the Eel-Hounds and just above the Second Tenor of the Corps of Minstrels—it jars him, we say, to find suddenly that he has got to go down a step in favour of the Hereditary Bearer of the King’s Baffy.
But it was from the priesthood that the real, serious opposition was to be expected. And the priests of the sixty-seven gods of Oom were up in arms. As the white-bearded High Priest of Hec, who by virtue of his office was generally regarded as leader of the guild, remarked in a glowing speech at an extraordinary meeting of the Priests’ Equity Association, he had always set his face against the principle of the Closed Shop hitherto, but there were moments when every thinking man had to admit that enough was sufficient, and it was his opinion that such a moment had now arrived. The cheers which greeted the words showed how correctly he had voiced popular sentiment.
Of all those who had listened to the High Priest’s speech, none had listened more intently than the King’s half-brother, Ascobaruch. A sinister, disappointed man, this Ascobaruch, with mean eyes and a crafty smile. All his life he had been consumed with ambition, and until now it had looked as though he must go to his grave with this ambition unfulfilled. All his life he had wanted to be King of Oom, and now he began to see daylight. He was sufficiently versed in Court intrigues to be aware that the priests were the party that really counted, the source from which all successful revolutions sprang. And of all the priests the one that mattered most was the venerable High Priest of Hec.
It was to this prelate, therefore, that Ascobaruch made his way at the close of the proceedings. The meeting had dispersed after passing a unanimous vote of censure on King Merolchazzar, and the High Priest was refreshing himself in the vestry—for the meeting had taken place in the Temple of Hec—with a small milk and honey.
“Some speech!” began Ascobaruch in his unpleasant, crafty way. None knew better than he the art of appealing to human vanity.
The High Priest was plainly gratified.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, modestly.
“Yessir!” said Ascobaruch. “Considerable oration! What I can never understand is how you think up all these things to say. I couldn’t do it if you paid me. The other night I had to propose the Visitors at the Old Alumni dinner of Oom University, and my mind seemed to go all blank. But you just stand up and the words come fluttering out of you like bees out of a barn. I simply cannot understand it. The thing gets past me.”
“Oh, it’s just a knack.”
“A divine gift, I should call it.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said the High Priest, finishing his milk and honey. He was wondering why he had never realized before what a capital fellow Ascobaruch was.
“Of course,” went on Ascobaruch, “you had an excellent subject. I mean to say, inspiring and all that. Why, by Hec, even I—though, of course, I couldn’t have approached your level—even I could have done something with a subject like that. I mean, going off and worshipping a new god no one has ever heard of. I tell you, my blood fairly boiled. Nobody has a greater respect and esteem for Merolchazzar than I have, but I mean to say, what! Not right, I mean, going off worshipping gods no one has ever heard of! I’m a peaceable man, and I’ve made it a rule never to mix in politics, but if you happened to say to me as we were sitting here, just as one reasonable man to another—if you happened to say, ‘Ascobaruch, I think it’s time that definite steps were taken,’ I should reply frankly, ‘My dear old High Priest, I absolutely agree with you, and I’m with you all the way.’ You might even go so far as to suggest that the only way out of the muddle was to assassinate Merolchazzar and start with a clean slate.”
The High Priest stroked his beard thoughtfully.
“I am bound to say I never thought of going quite so far as that.”
“Merely a suggestion, of course,” said Ascobaruch. “Take it or leave it. I shan’t be offended. If you know a superior excavation, go to it. But as a sensible man—and I’ve always maintained that you are the most sensible man in the country—you must see that it would be a solution. Merolchazzar has been a pretty good king, of course. No one denies that. A fair general, no doubt, and a plus-man at lion-hunting. But, after all—look at it fairly—is life all battles and lion-hunting? Isn’t there a deeper side? Wouldn’t it be better for the country to have some good orthodox fellow who has worshipped Hec all his life, and could be relied on to maintain the old beliefs—wouldn’t the fact that a man like that was on the throne be likely to lead to more general prosperity? There are dozens of men of that kind simply waiting to be asked. Let us say, purely for purposes of argument, that you approached me. I should reply, ‘Unworthy though I know myself to be of such an honour, I can tell you this. If you put me on the throne, you can bet your bottom pazaza that there’s one thing that won’t suffer, and that is the worship of Hec!’ That’s the way I feel about it.”
The High Priest pondered.
“O thou of unshuffled features but amiable disposition!” he said, “thy discourse soundeth good to me. Could it be done?”
“Could it!” Ascobaruch uttered a hideous laugh. “Could it! Arouse me in the night-watches and ask me! Question me on the matter, having stopped me for that purpose on the public highway! What I would suggest—I’m not dictating, mind you; merely trying to help you out—what I would suggest is that you took that long, sharp knife of yours, the one you use for the sacrifices, and toddled out to the Linx—you’re sure to find the King there; and just when he’s raising that sacrilegious stick of his over his shoulder⎯”
“O man of infinite wisdom,” cried the High Priest, warmly, “verily hast thou spoken a fullness of the mouth!”
“Is it a wager?” said Ascobaruch.
“It is a wager!” said the High Priest.
“That’s that, then,” said Ascobaruch. “Now, I don’t want to be mixed up in any unpleasantness, so what I think I’ll do while what you might call the preliminaries are being arranged is to go and take a little trip abroad somewhere. The Middle Lakes are pleasant at this time of year. When I come back, it’s possible that all the formalities have been completed, yes?”
“Rely on me, by Hec!” said the High Priest grimly, as he fingered his weapon.
The High Priest was as good as his word. Early on the morrow he made his way to the Linx, and found the King holing-out on the second green. Merolchazzar was in high good humour.
“Greetings, O venerable one!” he cried, jovially. “Hadst thou come a moment sooner, thou wouldst have seen me lay my ball dead—aye, dead as mutton, with the sweetest little half-mashie-niblick chip-shot ever seen outside the sacred domain of S’nandrew, on whom”—he bared his head reverently—”be peace! In one under bogey did I do the hole—yea, and that despite the fact that, slicing my drive, I became ensnared in yonder undergrowth.”
The High Priest had not the advantage of understanding one word of what the King was talking about, but he gathered with satisfaction that Merolchazzar was pleased and wholly without suspicion. He clasped an unseen hand more firmly
about the handle of his knife, and accompanied the monarch to the next altar. Merolchazzar stooped, and placed a small round white object on a little mound of sand. In spite of his austere views, the High Priest, always a keen student of ritual, became interested.
“Why does your Majesty do that?”
“I tee it up that it may fly the fairer. If I did not, then would it be apt to run along the ground like a beetle instead of soaring like a bird, and mayhap, for thou seest how rough and tangled is the grass before us, I should have to use a niblick for my second.”
The High Priest groped for his meaning.
“It is a ceremony to propitiate the god and bring good luck?”
“You might call it that.”
The High Priest shook his head.
“I may be old-fashioned,” he said, “but I should have thought that, to propitiate a god, it would have been better to have sacrificed one of these kaddiz on his altar.”
“I confess,” replied the King, thoughtfully, “that I have often felt that it would be a relief to one’s feelings to sacrifice one or two kaddiz, but The Pro for some reason or other has set his face against it.” He swung at the ball, and sent it forcefully down the fairway. “By Abe, the son of Mitchell,” he cried, shading his eyes, “a bird of a drive! How truly is it written in the book of the prophet Vadun, ‘The left hand applieth the force, the right doth but guide. Grip not, therefore, too closely with the right hand!’ Yesterday I was pulling all the time.”
The High Priest frowned.
“It is written in the sacred book of Hec, your Majesty, ‘Thou shalt not follow after strange gods’.”
“Take thou this stick, O venerable one,” said the King, paying no attention to the remark, “and have a shot thyself. True, thou art well stricken in years, but many a man has so wrought that he was able to give his grandchildren a stroke a hole. It is never too late to begin.”
The High Priest shrank back, horrified. The King frowned.
“It is our Royal wish,” he said, coldly.
The High Priest was forced to comply. Had they been alone, it is possible that he might have risked all on one swift stroke with his knife, but by this time a group of kaddiz had drifted up, and were watching the proceedings with that supercilious detachment so characteristic of them. He took the stick and arranged his limbs as the King directed.
“Now,” said Merolchazzar, “slow back and keep your e’e on the ba’!”
A month later, Ascobaruch returned from his trip. He had received no word from the High Priest announcing the success of the revolution, but there might be many reasons for that. It was with unruffled contentment that he bade his charioteer drive him to the palace. He was glad to get back, for after all a holiday is hardly a holiday if you have left your business affairs unsettled.
As he drove, the chariot passed a fair open space, on the outskirts of the city. A sudden chill froze the serenity of Ascobaruch’s mood. He prodded the charioteer sharply in the small of the back.
“What is that?” he demanded, catching his breath.
All over the green expanse could be seen men in strange robes, moving to and fro in couples and bearing in their hands mystic wands. Some searched restlessly in the bushes, others were walking briskly in the direction of small red flags. A sickening foreboding of disaster fell upon Ascobaruch.
The charioteer seemed surprised at the question.
“Yon’s the muneecipal linx,” he replied.
“The what?”
“The muneecipal linx.”
“Tell me, fellow, why do you talk that way?”
“Whitway?”
“Why, like that. The way you’re talking.”
“Hoots, mon!” said the charioteer. “His Majesty King Merolchazzar—may his handicap decrease!—hae passit a law that a’ his soobjects shall do it. Aiblins, ’tis the language spoken by The Pro, on whom be peace! Mphm!”
Ascobaruch sat back limply, his head swimming. The chariot drove on, till now it took the road adjoining the royal Linx. A wall lined a portion of this road, and suddenly, from behind this wall, there rent the air a great shout of laughter.
“Pull up!” cried Ascobaruch to the charioteer.
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 uneaqualled 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 were 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?”
A fair and pleasing sight was the Princess of the Outer Isles as she stood on the terrace in the clear sunshine of the summer morning, looking over the King’s gardens. With her delicate littles nose she sniffed the fragrance of the flowers. Her blue eyes roamed over the rose bushes, and the breeze ruffled the golden curls about her temples. Presently a sound behind her caused her to turn, and she perceived a godlike man hurrying across the terrace pulling up a sock. And at the sight of him the Princess’s heart sang within her like the birds in the garden.
“Hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” said Merolchazzar, apologetically. He, too, was conscious of a strange, wild exhilaration. Truly was this maiden, as his Chamberlain had said, noticeably easy on the eyes. Her beauty was as water in the desert, as fire on a frosty night, as diamonds, rubies, pearls, sapphires, and amethysts.
“Oh, no!” said the princess, “I’ve been enjoying myself. How passing beautiful are thy gardens, O King!”
“My gardens may be passing beau
tiful,” said Merolchazzar, earnestly, “but they aren’t half so passing beautiful as thy eyes. I have dreamed of thee by night and by day, and I will tell the world I was nowhere near it! My sluggish fancy came not within a hundred and fifty-seven miles of the reality. Now let the sun dim his face and the moon hide herself abashed. Now let the flowers bend their heads and the gazelle of the mountains confess itself a cripple. Princess, your slave!”
And King Merolchazzar, with that easy grace so characteristic of Royalty, took her hand in his and kissed it.
As he did so, he gave a start of surprise.
“By Hec!” he exclaimed. “What hast thou been doing to thyself? Thy hand is all over little rough places inside. Has some malignant wizard laid a spell upon thee, or what is it?”
The Princess blushed.
“If I make that clear to thee,” she said, “I shall also make clear why it was that I sent thee no message all this long while. My time was so occupied, verily I did not seem to have a moment. The fact is, these sorenesses are due to a strange, new religion to which I and my subjects have but recently become converted. And O that I might make thee also of the true faith! ’Tis a wondrous tale, my lord. Some two moons back there was brought to my Court by wandering pirates a captive of an uncouth race who dwell in the north. And this man has taught us⎯”
King Merolchazzar uttered a loud cry.
“By Tom, the son of Morris! Can this truly be so? What is thy handicap?”
The Princess stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Truly this is a miracle! Art thou also a worshipper of the great Gowf?”
“Am I!” cried the King. “Am I!” He broke off. “Listen!”
From the minstrels’ room high up in the palace there came the sound of singing. The minstrels were practising a new pæan of praise—words by the Grand Vizier, music by the High Priest of Hec—which they were to render at the next full moon at the banquet of the worshippers of Gowf. The words came clear and distinct through the still air:
“Oh, praises let us utter