THE COURT OF THE KING

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE SOUL OF A CAT.

THE VENTURE OF RATIONAL FAITH.

CAPITAL LABOUR AND TRADE AND THE OUTLOOK.

SUBJECT TO VANITY.

THE TEMPLE OF MUT IN ASHER. (With J. A. Gourlay.)

THE COURT OF THE KING

AND OTHER STUDIES

By MARGARET BENSON

T. FISHER UNWIN LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20

First published, 1913 (All rights reserved)

PREFACE

“We wake with wrists and ankles jewelled still.”

There are many ways of entering fairyland; sometimes there is a door in the ground, and he who goes through finds himself in some great hall or carved and painted chamber. Sometimes we find the morning dew on a flower and touch the eyes with it; or, like John Dietrich, catch the cap which the fairies are flinging and put it on our own heads: and immediately the little people spring into sight, we hear the[6] sweetness of their music and see the glitter of their hidden treasure and watch the merriness of their games.

The difficulty of the first method is to find the way, of the second to find the will; and John Dietrich’s way is the venture of confidence.

Children are continually in fairyland; grubbing in mother earth they find the door; as they tumble on the grass the morning dew touches their eyes and makes them pure.

But sometimes the light of fairyland will shine suddenly about you; and you know it is no common glow though it seems but the light of day to many. So a child sauntering and playing at midday in the fields may throw back its head and look into a[7] deep blue summer sky, and be seized on a sudden by a beauty which troubles the spirit, a greatness which weighs upon the soul and wearies it, till the will fails. Or the light may shine softer at evening through the nursery window, when roofs of houses and branches of elder purple and darken against a sky all purest primrose, and draw the young spirit with a half-comprehended longing. Sometimes it comes with raptures of sunlight in a green garden; sometimes cold and strange in moonlight when existence holds its breath, and earth is lost in shadow or refined to vapour in uncertain light; sometimes with a fullness of peace in pale emerald of evening light jewelling the latticed windows[8] of an old house, till the enchantment thickens and the spirit pants with the presage of the moment, waiting for a revelation which still delays.

And sometimes it is filled with the very spirit of the little people: curious, amused, fantastic—as when you walk on a sea-shore, and suddenly, as with the touch of a charm, the pool at your feet becomes a little inland sea: you see the rocky shores sloping down, the sandy bottom, the submarine promontories through the blue: forests of seaweed sway; a terrible creature with claws crawls out through pale coralline; a lump of red jelly stretches out its arms and becomes now a living, crimson flower, now a horrid polypus ravaging, irresistible; a fairy being[9] mailed in translucent armour floats on with antennæ fiercely waving; and you are back in fairyland.

Many times you may borrow the Red Cap to watch the boy Stevenson titanically carve mountains and seas in a mere mess of porridge; or to hear with Charles Kingsley when the grouse prophesies doom on the moor or the empty gnat boasts himself beside the stream. But sweetest of all it is to win for yourself the charm which opens your eyes in wood or field, and to hear with awakened ear the voices of created things.

These things should be at our command; but the things which children know we must re-learn; and there is no truth more evident to the child nor[10] more surely proved to the philosopher than that all which we see or hear depends for all its meaning on the soul of the world that no man sees or hears. Let this book be taken as a short and simple lesson-book in hidden meanings. Life gives us many lessons hard to read, and problems painful to unriddle; but here in kind and simple wise our lesson was made plain and the page was pleasant to read: for to the eyes of everyday, in varying scenes, among diverse races, and nations long since dead “the dear old nurse” showed us the things which follow. She brought us through the Gates of Gold and sent us to float on the serene water below a pleasant pasture; she taught us daily, dwelling on the other side; led us[11] by moonlight to the Court of the King; showed us through sordid circumstance the silent romance on the golden hill, as she had showed us romantic incidents, even in the Desert City; then she surrendered

us to the guardianship of her child Imagination who, through the voices of others, brought back for us the Oriental vision of the royal boat in the mysterious midnight solemnity. And from this our older guardian led us back, and blotting out for us sight and sound of a populous city by a transparent veil, made us understand how to trust the mightiness of the life of which we were part.

Then she bade us close the book with the touch of pain and healing sent to quicken into life, and again[12] Imagination sent us, among the scenes of daily life to look for the beautiful kingdom which endures: And we must say it in what form we may, so that we catch the meaning of the simple word, so early and so often said, from which our stubborn sense rebels, “the prison is the world of sight.”

Thus before memory should fade too much I wrote down some of the things I had under guidance witnessed and experienced, and those which the child Imagination had, as I say, taught in divers ways.

For too often we let memory lie like a rabbit in a winter burrow; and imagination buzzes on the surface of things like a fly on a pane: we narrow our vision to our purpose and our hearing[13] to intelligible voices, till it needs a shock of strangeness or of beauty to bring us back to realities—to rouse memory to throw open the door in the hillside, to make imagination leave its sheet of glass for the world of air and light, to let the beauties and the music of the infinite creation reach the dull brain.

MARGARET BENSON.

[14]

I THE GATES OF GOLD

The favourite game with Noah’s Ark was to make the nursery table an Island of Delight. The Delight must have centred in the looking-glasses, which, with frames discreetly hidden in moss, mirrored in their unruffled surfaces forms of numerous ducks and geese and other less decided species of birds. Certainly the other furnishings of the Island were not particularly delightful, for it was[20] thickly populated with wild beasts of horrid aspect and defective limbs, and specimens of that strange pinkish animal of which Noah is so fond, and which may be classified with equal probability as a Dingo or a Wild Boar.

My earliest ideas of an Oasis were combined of this Island of Delight and of the description of Elim. The Oasis would be round as the nursery table; it would be covered with lush green grass like a water-meadow. It would have about seventy palm-trees standing at fairly regular intervals, and between the palm-trees there would be (instead of the looking-glasses) bubbling springs of water crystal-clear.

[21]When at last I saw an Oasis it was unlike my vision—my Vision of Delight. There was no grass, but there were more palm-trees; there were no crystal fountains, but trickles of brown water in sandy channels. It came up to my ideal in one point only—there was none of that indefiniteness of outline which is so repulsive to the simple mind. Even as you can stand on the bridge above Mentone, and see a milestone with France on one side and a milestone with Italy on the other, so here you could take your stand and say “That on my right hand is Desert, and that on my left is Oasis.”

We had been travelling all day over the sandy, dusty plains of North[22] Africa; we had found little to eat at the shed-like stations except blue cheese and musty bread; and towards evening we entered a rocky defile. At the end of this defile they said were the Gates of Gold. There was not much to see and the train loitered on.

Suddenly we saw at the end of the valley two great escarpments of reddish rock; at their foot leaned one palm-tree, behind was a glimpse of blue hills. The evening sunlight fell golden on the Golden Gates as we passed through and suddenly cried out, for everywhere below us spread a sea of waving palm-trees. This was the Oasis.

The Oasis lay on a plain so flat that the horizon to the south curved[23] like the horizon of the sea; and like little clouds resting on the ocean here and there an oasis showed greyish green in the distance. To the north lay a range of hills, which guarded the enchanted place from the world of men. The flatness drew the soul with a strange attraction, until one longed to go out over it farther than eye could reach, anywhere or nowhere. The desert was in sandy ridges like a badly ploughed field; isolated tufts of a heath-like plant grew here and there; often there lay on the ground, as if spilled from a cart, yellow apples, reddening invitingly. Evil fruits these are, full of dust and bitterness, and even the camel will not eat them.

[24]But within the Oasis were golden oranges, juicy, like no oranges you eat here, for they ripen on the dark, glossy trees; there were gardens of purple fig and yellow citrons large as the head of an Arab child; and the dates were sweet and large, and half transparent in their candied clusters.

But the enchanted time was when the moon was high, its silver light was faintly tinged with rose; then one walked under the palm-trees, and light and shadow lay like silver and ebony across the path, interlacing and waving if some faint breeze stirred them, and the strange, sweet odours of the East lay warm and thick, and the tinkle of Arab sounds were in our ears, and[25] the slim brown figures moved across the path; and we went back to dream of silver lights and waving, ebon shadows.

And one morning we went away from the Oasis, and passed through the Gates of Gold, and back into the world of men, to find we had been but two days away.

[26]

THE LAKE WITHIN THE WORLD

II THE LAKE WITHIN THE WORLD

There were other such enchanted places in this land, and one could step aside from the high-road of life into a place of fantasy and sweet illusion. The dawdling, leisured train set us down one day at a wayside station. No houses were in sight, but behind a clump of trees a cloud of steam rose into the air, as if all the world was a-washing. The train dawdled away[30] across the plain and we went towards the trees to find ourselves in face of a shining, misty waterfall. The white stone was streaked with grey and pink; the water boiled up in little cauldrons and fell down in a cloud of steam; at the bottom of the dazzling rocks oleanders bent over the warm streams, maiden-hair fringed the banks; hoary olives with twisted trunks rose above the oleanders.

While we still waited there came up from the side of the steaming river a splendid figure—a woman all in scarlet hung about with silvery chains. “That,” said the guide, “is the washer-woman.” We climbed up behind the waterfall, where it sprang in its strange excitement out of the earth, and found[31] a stone courtyard, built round with little empty houses, one of these prepared for us.

While we paused at the door a moment, I saw between the stones a tiny plant—a plant to conjure with. It is like clover, splashed with crimson. A poet who wore the Red Cap has said that this crimson is the blood of Spring, and, to him, a drop of his own heart’s blood.

A French family were living here in a clean, empty house with airy guest-rooms; and while they regaled us with wild-boar’s flesh they talked of the topics of their day: how the jackals howled about the courtyard in winter; how the rugged way to the Roman City was not yet open; how[32] the locusts came down ten years ago, swarm upon swarm, till you could hear the sound of the eating of their hosts by night; how they devoured fruit and leaf and bark like the “army” in Joel, and then melted like snow under the sun.

In this strange, quiet land we slept well, and went out next day over the pleasant undulating plain, watered by warm streams with their bordering of oleander and fern, and sheltered by olive and carob.

At last we came to a place where a grassy bank swept round us in a half circle. “Fourteen years ago,” said the guide “the shepherds feeding their flocks close by heard a great noise, and running hither saw the earth had fallen[33] in,” and he pointed as he spoke to a crack in the side of the bank, just such a rent as a great tree makes when it falls, tearing its roots out of the ground. “Into that,” he said, “you must go.”

So we went towards it in faith, and found when we got there a man could easily pass in. As we descended into the hot twilight inside the ground a bat flew out. We went down-hill until the guide stopped us, where there seemed to lie at our feet a little blue dust over the stones, for this was the still blue water of a lake that stretched away into deep and deeper darkness. As we stood we heard out of the darkness the splash of oars, a light shone on the water, and round the sheer wall[34] of rock on the right came a boat with a lantern at its prow.

Into this we stepped, and it moved on into the deep shadows. Out of the dark water rose great stalagmites like columns, and stalactites dropped to meet them like heavy pendants from some vaulted roof. We moved round rocky chambers where the lantern shone on the walls, and through halls whose boundaries were unrevealed; all sense of direction and of time was lost till a flash of lightning seemed to fall on the water. It was only the reflected light of a grey day, filtered through the rent in the earth down which we had come, but after that great darkness it seemed dazzling.

So we went up again to the light[35] of day, and back through that pleasant land. But when we came away, I brought with me a leaf of the crimson-splashed clover “to witness if I lie.”

[36]

A DESERT CITY

[38]

III A DESERT CITY

In the desert not twenty miles from Cairo there has sprung up the mushroom growth of a wonder-working Health Resort. It possesses several hotels, an “Establishment,” a golf links, and everything which a really[40] desirable Health Resort must possess.[1] But at the time when I first knew that tract of sand on which it stands the case was far otherwise. If one must have summarized the attractions of the place they would have run:—

An English advertisement of foreign appearance bore witness to these charms and ended with a striking appeal to leave for desert air “the filthy, stinking city,” as it characterized Grand Cairo.

[41]We responded to the appeal, and went to stay in a hotel of large corridors and wide balconies which looked out upon the fifteen pyramids. Opposite was a small, bare house called Villa Mon Bijou. The town was planted on a desert so flat that it seemed a German toy town set upon a table; only there were no trees with curly green foliage to be seen, because no one might plant a living thing unless by order from Government.[2] Neat little pavements with new little gas lamps traversed it rectangularly, and came every way to an abrupt stop in heavy desert sand. There was a tiny English church, in which the few English[42] Christians staying in the place assembled. Little flat-roofed villas like coloured cardboard boxes stood back from the pavement with strange ornaments above the gate; here a stone eagle with knees turned outwards, there a stuffed fox. Backwards and forwards we went under noontide sun to the baths, and were told to rest in the Khedive’s sitting-room, upholstered with yellow satin.

One would have thought that nothing so brand-new could have been found in sight of the pyramid of Unas and the cemetery of Sakkara. Even death seemed glaringly recent. One day we drove in the desert and searched the horizon for objects of interest. “What is that?” we said, pointing[43] to a small building on the outskirts of the town. “That,” replied Saïd with pride, “is the new slaughter-house.” “And this enclosure?” “The English cemetery.” “And that yonder?” “The Italian mortuary.” “What is that which looks like a village on the hill?” “That is the Mahommedan burying-place.” “And that beyond?” “Another graveyard.” Then he drove us through a valley of Hinnom, where we marked, among other things, a dead camel and a dead calf; and as we passed between the windmill and the ill-smelling stream we saw three coffins lie, brand-new, unguarded and alone.

But towards evening a certain magic fell upon the place. We had gone one day towards the single palm-tree in the[44] desert. Miles and miles of sand and air, unstirred by any slightest sound, seemed to lie between us and that solitary tree, and when we reached it nothing could be seen but the slot of beasts around it.

Then as we turned the light began to change. Behind the fifteen pyramids the sky glowed scarlet till it tinged the water of the Nile with blood. Far up in the blue hung an ethereal arc of crimson light; the heaven deepened to indigo where it met night; kindled into indescribable sapphire where it touched the dying day; the conflagration grew till at last earth glowed its answer to the sky with a purple flood rising and deluging sand-hills and valley.

[45]As we neared the toy town with its twinkling lights the glow had died away, and there gloomed before us dimly a knoll round which knelt the camels of the Bedawîn; the figures which moved beside them with dark, fine profile and the white cloths round their heads seemed like Magi come to greet the Royal Child.

Again we went up the hills which, like a low rampart, bordered the plain to the east. At the foot they were carved into quarries of a stone so white that it seemed like wedges cut in a great cream cheese. The hills were barren, but for a few straggling plants and grasses about; like a raised map or the skeleton of the world. Yet as we went on we still found always in front,[46] like the marks on the carriage drive, a curving, trodden road, winding up vanishing out of sight.

While we stood looking at the loneliness there came daintily stepping, with embroidered shoes and black silk mantles round them, a party of women to meet us; in front a man carried a child. I cannot but think that they vanished into thin air when they had passed us.

Or again one might descend towards the river, on the road between the fields. There as the sky lights its fires towards evening the men would leave their work and stand with dripping feet on their coarse outer garment by the water’s edge to say the evening prayer. Near the town stood a[47] sycamore, under which, on a raised platform, some men prayed loud and lustily five times a day. “God likit them very much,” said the donkey-boy; but with cynical estimation of the importance of this fact he added, “If I bray, where is my business?”

A brougham on the road as we returned: Europe is at one side. But within sat a woman golden haired, with her veil pushed back and a cigarette between her teeth. That one passing, demure and dignified, with an attendant wrinkled and stately, is a Princess walking for her health. Here two in a victoria, with transparent veils and Paris bonnets, show Turkish emancipation; and the shut and blinded brougham with a Sudanese on the box gives sign of Arab propriety.

[48]And now as the town is reached we begin to see the meaning of this modern city; those high walls are not merely meant to hide a garden of flowers, nor does the lattice serve only to keep the sunlight from fading Eastern fabrics. But behind the pierced work of that window peers some Scheherazade at her story-weaving, wondering what life means, “half sick of shadows.” There is the Pasha’s house, and the whisper goes that these are slaves.