LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 l SAN DI6o
 
 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 reserve^)
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " We wake with wrists and ankles jewelled 
 still." 
 
 THERE are many ways of entering fairy- 
 land ; 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 
 5
 
 Preface 
 
 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 fairy- 
 land ; 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 
 6
 
 Preface 
 
 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 un- 
 certain light ; sometimes with a full- 
 ness of peace in pale emerald of evening 
 light jewelling the latticed windows 
 7
 
 Preface 
 
 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 pro- 
 montories through the blue : forests of 
 seaweed sway ; a terrible creature with 
 claws crawls out through pale coral- 
 line ; 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 
 8
 
 Preface 
 
 mailed in translucent armour floats on 
 with antennas 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 com- 
 mand ; but the things which children 
 know we must re-learn ; and there is no 
 truth more evident to the child nor 
 9
 
 Preface 
 
 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 
 10
 
 Preface 
 
 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 sur- 
 rendered 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 
 ii
 
 Preface 
 
 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 ex- 
 perienced, 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 hear- 
 
 12
 
 Preface 
 
 ing 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.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE 5 
 
 I 
 THE GATES OF GOLD . . . . .17 
 
 II 
 THE LAKE WITHIN THE WORLD . . 27 
 
 III 
 A DESERT CITY ... -37 
 
 IV 
 THE OTHER SIDE 
 
 V 
 
 THE SILENT ROMANCE 
 
 53 
 
 73 
 '5 
 
 \
 
 Contents 
 
 VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE COURT OF THE KING .... 85 
 
 VII 
 THE GOLDEN DAHABEAH . . . . IOI 
 
 VIII 
 THE UNSEEN WORLD 125 
 
 IX 
 
 FROM THE BANK OF THE RIVER . 1 35 
 
 16
 
 THE GATES OF GOLD
 
 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 fur- 
 nishings of the Island were not 
 particularly delightful, for it was 
 19
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 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 inter- 
 vals, and between the palm-trees there 
 would be (instead of the looking-glasses) 
 bubbling springs of water crystal- 
 clear. 
 
 20
 
 The Gates of Gold 
 
 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 out- 
 line 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 
 21
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 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 
 22
 
 The Gates of Gold 
 
 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. 
 
 23
 
 'The Court of the King 
 
 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 
 24
 
 The Gates of Gold 
 
 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.
 
 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 
 29
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 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 
 30
 
 The Lake within the World 
 
 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
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 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 
 32
 
 The Lake within the World 
 
 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 dark- 
 ness the splash of oars, a light shone 
 on the water, and round the sheer wall 
 33 c
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 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 
 34
 
 The Lake within the World 
 
 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." 
 
 35
 
 A DESERT CITY
 
 Ill 
 
 A DESERT CITY 
 
 " He seems as one whose footsteps halt 
 Toiling in immeasurable sand 
 And o'er a weary sultry land 
 Sown in a wrinlde of the monstrous hill 
 The city sparkles like a grain of salt." 
 
 IN the desert not twenty miles from 
 Cairo there has sprung up the mush- 
 room growth of a wonder-working 
 Health Resort. It possesses several 
 hotels, an " Establishment," a golf 
 links, and everything which a really 
 39
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 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 : 
 
 Fifteen pyramids ... ... Distant 
 
 One palm-tree ... ... Distant 
 
 Several ill-smelling streams ... Quite close 
 Flat sandy desert ... ... Near and distant 
 
 A perfectly bare range of low hills beginning half 
 a mile away and reaching to Arabia. 
 
 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. 
 
 1 Some of the descriptions which follow include 
 things seen on our later visits. 
 
 4
 
 A Desert City 
 
 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. 1 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 
 
 1 In later years we found a garden open to the 
 public, and even trees in it. 
 
 41
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 Christians staying in the place as- 
 sembled. Little flat-roofed villas like 
 coloured cardboard boxes stood back 
 from the pavement with strange orna- 
 ments 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, uphol- 
 stered 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 
 42
 
 A Desert City 
 
 to a small building on the outskirts of 
 the town. "That," replied Sai'd with 
 pride, " is the new slaughter-house." 
 " And this enclosure ? " " The Eng- 
 lish 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 
 43
 
 7 'he Court of the King 
 
 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 pyra- 
 mids 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. 
 44
 
 A Desert City 
 
 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 Bedawin ; 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, 
 45
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 like the marks on the carriage drive, 
 a curving, trodden road, winding up 
 vanishing out of sight. 
 
 While we stood looking at the lone- 
 liness 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
 
 A Desert City 
 
 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 cigar- 
 ette 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. 
 47
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 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 Schehezerade 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. 
 
 A strange, pathetic figure trod this 
 road daily, a man of aquiline face, 
 brown skin, and pointed beard, dressed 
 in a fine embroidered garment of 
 scarlet with white cloth falling on his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Evening by evening he left the 
 48
 
 A Desert City 
 
 town, and squatting by one of the 
 sulphur streams looked out with level 
 eyes towards the farthest horizon of the 
 south, his beads held idly in his hands. 
 That man, we learned, was the Pasha's 
 gatekeeper and came from the Sudan. 
 
 One day a crowd ran and digged 
 by the side of this stream. " What 
 are they doing ? " we asked, and the 
 answer was that they were making a 
 garden. It will surely blossom like 
 the rose but not on those flowers 
 will the gatekeeper gaze. 
 
 In the evening when the moon has 
 risen, and a great star close to her tip 
 hangs the banner of the Moslems in 
 heaven, the magic is most potent. 
 Then the flat-roofed houses become 
 palaces of marble, and among the 
 49 D
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 dark figures stealing through the 
 street you look for Mesrour on his 
 secret errands, that he may show you 
 the mysteries of life and death behind 
 veil and wall and lattice. Then one 
 may well believe that over at Sakkara 
 under the sand-hills the dead are 
 sitting in their carven chambers, to 
 play their games and cast their spells 
 and eat and drink. 
 
 And yet in Europe they talk of free- 
 ing Egypt, and speak of the " patriot " 
 dervish ; and at Gordon's death-place, 
 where the gatekeeper was born and 
 from which he was stolen, they enter- 
 tain the Pasha with the honours of a 
 burgess. 
 
 Who wakes ? who dreams ? Surely 
 the Western eye sees clear, which 
 50
 
 A Desert City 
 
 looks on the place in the searching 
 noonday light ; for it is the hand of 
 the Western that planted Villa Mon 
 Bijou and raised the gas lamps. 
 
 Leave it then with its neat realities 
 and its fancied magic ; draw away 
 over the sand towards the Great River 
 and the dwellings of the dead ; and as 
 one might see across the great ocean 
 a line of reef built up by tiny busy 
 insects, so look back once to see over 
 " immeasurable sand," " the city sparkle 
 like a grain of salt."
 
 THE OTHER SIDE
 
 IV 
 THE OTHER SIDE 
 
 WHEN Alice went through the 
 Looking-glass, she sprang down into a 
 world where a change had passed on 
 all familiar things ; so that she must 
 walk away from the things she wanted 
 to arrive at, and time ran back- 
 wards and stopped. When a merman 
 brought a girl through the translucent 
 mirror of the water to be his wife in 
 the great caves below the sea, she heard 
 but dimly the church bell and the 
 55
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 sounds of the world above, and saw but 
 seldom its sights when she rose through 
 the bay. And when Tom slipped into 
 the stream he found himself in a great 
 empty world below the water ; and it 
 was not for some time that he was able 
 even to see the crowds of merry water- 
 babies with which it was peopled. 
 
 We had often looked into the look- 
 ing-glass from a little village on the 
 bank of a great river. Sometimes this 
 river was only a river of muddy water ; 
 sometimes towards evening, when no 
 wind ruffled its surface, it was a mirror 
 of burnished metal, reflecting the fires 
 of the west ; sometimes a river of 
 molten gold. Sometimes, when the sky 
 was bright above, it was a stretch of 
 sapphire, edged with gold and set in 
 
 56
 
 The Other Side 
 
 emerald, for beyond the sandy shore of 
 the river lay a great sea of green 
 corn few trees were there, but the 
 waving corn, and animals pasturing 
 in luxuriant vetch ; and beyond this 
 again began the sandy desert, which 
 stretched away to the bases of the hills. 
 
 So the River ran, dividing the 
 country, and the two sides of it have 
 been called since the beginning of 
 history the two lands. The River was 
 broad, and so deep that the reptiles of 
 the one side have never been able to 
 cross to the other, and the lizards of 
 the two lands are of quite different 
 kinds. 
 
 But just at the edge of the desert 
 you begin to see traces of quite a dif- 
 ferent kind of life, the giant images of 
 57
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 people long dead, and their temples ; 
 behind in the cliff you may see, even 
 from across the river, the doors of rock- 
 hewn chambers which are called the 
 Eternal Habitations. That side of the 
 river is called the City of the Dead. 
 
 Now the people of the village oppo- 
 site used to speak of going over to the 
 " Other Side." They crossed the river, 
 and rode through the fields of waving 
 corn, and the men and women who 
 moved among the fields, who tethered 
 the beasts to pasture, the little children 
 who drove oxen in the creaking sakhieh 
 seemed like figures of a picture to 
 them ; and when they reached the City 
 of the Dead, the desert places of the 
 Eternal Habitations, the Silent Citizens 
 were unperceived by them, their voices 
 
 58
 
 7 'be Other Side 
 
 were unheard ; or they seemed to see 
 but rude stone figures of an earlier age, 
 dead bodies, unskilful paintings on the 
 wall. Before they could recognize the 
 living men they had turned back and 
 recrossed the river, and never knew 
 that they had been so near the mysteries 
 of the " Other Side." 
 
 But when you came to live in the 
 country on the Other Side the aspect of 
 it was altogether different. At the 
 back, the country was walled in by 
 precipices of rock, a great golden wall 
 from which spurs ran down on to the 
 desert. If you climbed up the first 
 ridge to get a farther view you saw 
 ridge on ridge of the same barren hills, 
 with golden rocky defiles, reflecting back 
 and back again the eastern sunlight. At 
 59
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 certain hours of the day a stream of 
 people, like small ants, poured up one 
 valley, over a hill and back again across 
 the river ; otherwise there was never a 
 sign of human life, except that, from 
 peak to peak, at far distances, you might 
 see a little rock-built shelter, and the 
 solitary figure of a watchman who 
 guarded the chambers of the dead. 
 
 Between the hills and the cultivated 
 lands are lower hills, half rock, half 
 sand, with sandy slopes. In the sand 
 there gaped holes about the paths as 
 you rode or walked, and looking down 
 you might peer into a chamber, 
 sculptured with images of men and 
 women sitting at feasts ; or higher up 
 in the hill you would see a squared door- 
 way of stone facing sometimes a great 
 60
 
 The Other Side 
 
 courtyard, and entering, you might find 
 a pillared chamber, gold vessels and 
 jewelled boats painted on the wall ; 
 here a picture of a man propelling his 
 bark through marshy groves populous 
 with birds, there one driving the 
 plough, and a woman sowing corn ; 
 here a kingly child on his nurse's knee ; 
 there the antelope caught by the dogs 
 and dripping blood from the hunter's 
 arrow. The longer one lived here the 
 more one began to see of these doors in 
 the hillside and holes in the ground, 
 until it seemed that the whole moun- 
 tain was honeycombed with the rock- 
 hewn chambers. Sometimes you might 
 cross a courtyard where the eastern 
 slope of a hill lay in cool shadow ; 
 pass through one painted room after 
 61
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 another, chapel and shrine, shrine and 
 chapel, and so come out on the other 
 side of the hill still golden in the light 
 of the setting sun. 1 
 
 Down below these rocks, clustering 
 round the doorways of the lowest slopes, 
 are brown houses that a day's rain can 
 bring to ruin, villages like a child's 
 building in sand ; open yards, sheds 
 thatched with straw, erections in mud 
 like gigantic mushrooms with upturned 
 brim ; and for the more permanent 
 part of the habitation these childish 
 builders have borrowed the rocky 
 chambers. 
 
 For the truth is that two races of 
 people inhabit this country. The one 
 
 1 More than one such outer chapel of a tomb 
 we made to serve as a place for Christian worship. 
 62
 
 The Other Side 
 
 race are like merry, selfish children, 
 though a mystery of simplicity hangs 
 about them like the mystery of the 
 hidden life of a child. In their villages 
 ring sounds of men and animals all 
 day and all night ; voices are hoarse 
 with talking and singing ; it seems 
 like a great orchestra of the inhabitants. 
 Up to the middle of the night donkeys 
 chant their canon, cocks blow their 
 clarion ; all day you hear the groaning 
 of camels, the agitated voices of kids and 
 lambs, the lamentable cries of their 
 mothers ; towards evening the lowing 
 of kine as they return from the sakhieh, 
 the fury of the dogs, the provocative 
 cry of the jackal, and sometimes as 
 night falls the long, weird howling of 
 the wolf. Then when the moon is 
 
 63
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 full the children sing in chorus, apeing 
 the elder boys at their work ; the 
 workers of the day are the feasters of 
 the night, and drum and song help 
 on the fantasia. Here is merriment 
 and noise, complaint, vociferous de- 
 mand, swift anger, cheerfulness again ; 
 the ragged children and young animals 
 race and play from simple excess of 
 vitality. 
 
 Yet all this noise is like the chatter- 
 ing of a brook in a quiet place, though 
 it beats loud upon the ear it is as 
 powerless against the great quiet of 
 the desert as lapping waves against a 
 rocky shore. 
 
 For the other race that lives here 
 is silent, yet their words have gone 
 out into the ends of the world. You
 
 The Other Side 
 
 leave the villages and mount the hill, 
 and the noise comes fainter from below. 
 You pass through the chambers and 
 see these greater people live their lives 
 and learn from the writing on the wall 
 what " he saith." You go towards 
 evening up some valley of golden rocks, 
 where the sunlight reflected from the 
 sand shines on the shadowed cliff like 
 the shining of a hidden lake, and find 
 in a fold of the hill a little empty 
 temple of old time ; or descending 
 rocky steps pass into a chamber where 
 the walls present great deeds of state, 
 ambassadors clad in fine embroidered 
 dresses bring foreign tribute of nations 
 long perished, precious things of gold 
 and gem, strange beasts from far 
 countries. Or when clouds are chasing
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 through a moonlit sky you pass up 
 a road between sand-hills towards a 
 temple of these silent races ; its white 
 pillars and colonnades now flash out 
 silver in a sudden gleam of light ; and 
 now the shadow of a cloud passing 
 with purple bloom over the hill above 
 annihilates courts and terraces, until it 
 seems a magician's wand is at work, 
 destroying and re-creating this ghostly 
 building. 
 
 Or at evening you ride through the 
 place of tombs ; the sun has sunk, 
 and a glow, orange and red, gives a 
 sharp outline to the hills. Out of 
 the holes in the ground come an army 
 of little shadows, sweeping faster than 
 the eye can follow them over the 
 unlevel ground ; and from the rocks 
 66
 
 The Other Side 
 
 on the left peers out a sharp nose and 
 ears, and the jackal runs with heavy 
 drooping tail across the path, and 
 dodges behind a big stone to peer out 
 with insatiable curiosity as you pass ; 
 or in the night one hears the cry of 
 a wild cat caught and torn by the dogs. 
 There are no merry flocks of birds 
 here as in the cultivated land below, and 
 but little sound of their voices. The 
 sparrow indeed, who holds nothing 
 sacred, chatters his minute affairs in 
 the great silence ; the discreet wagtail 
 runs about the ledges of the rocks, 
 the black and white chat bows on a 
 stone. But the most part are seen on 
 the wing ; the soft grey martin, with 
 its atmosphere of domestic peace, 
 hovers about the Eternal Habitations, 
 
 6?
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 thinking to rear its young in the 
 chambers of the dead ; the swallows 
 made wild by their long flight, and 
 loosed from the restraints of the North, 
 build their nests on the cliff, and sweep 
 at sunset, with musical screams, up and 
 down the face of the rock ; great kites 
 circle above in the hot noonday, let fall 
 sometimes their weird whistling cry, 
 circling on and on till the vast blue 
 engulfs them ; and once, high in the 
 sky towards evening, there came a flight 
 of cranes, who wheeled, split, and re- 
 crossed, then gathered decision and 
 moved stately in black and white 
 northwards. 
 
 All luxuriance of life had vanished. 
 Even as time seemed to have stood 
 still, and the people learnt their arts 
 68
 
 The Other Side 
 
 and crafts from those who died six 
 thousand years ago, so growth seemed 
 to have vanished from the visible 
 world. Now and then as you wandered 
 up a valley a single blade of barley 
 shone like a gem half hidden by a 
 stone ; or some plant, desert-coloured, 
 spread, dry greyish tufts, where the 
 ground retained invisible moisture. 
 But life hung suspended, and the 
 longer you dwelt in the country the 
 more you perceived that you were 
 living in the City of the Dead. 
 Sometimes one forgot how days and 
 weeks were passing, and again a 
 thousand years were but as yesterday, 
 a watch in the night. The noises of 
 the outside world came but faintly : 
 once, we heard the sound of a nation
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 weeping and the nations of the earth 
 sorrowing with it, and again the sober 
 welcome to one who came to take upon 
 him the burden of the State. 
 
 So they sorrowed four thousand years 
 ago not without hope. " A hawk 
 has soared the follower of the god 
 met his maker." So the officers of 
 State welcomed the son who should 
 take its cares upon him. And on 
 that very night when with grief and 
 praise the nation laid to rest a Queen 
 and mother in the fullness of her age, 
 our eyes looked on, resting untouched, 
 deep in the recesses of the rock, among 
 the mystic symbols of his faith, the 
 body of a king swathed still and gar- 
 landed who died three thousand years 
 before that Queen was born. 
 70
 
 The Other Side 
 
 The sounds of war came dimly, 
 for the pictures of far earlier wars 
 might meet the eyes day by day ; 
 and when we came on the bodies of 
 those men who warred and taught 
 and lived and enjoyed, alert in the 
 chase, quiescent in the cool breath of 
 their gardens, they lay quiet with 
 their ornaments perhaps upon them, 
 a garland round their neck, a book 
 between their feet. 
 
 But when at last returning we came 
 down to the fields, we saw that time 
 indeed had passed. The corn which 
 was but sprouting when we came, was 
 full in the ear, and the barley was 
 yellowing to harvest ; the bean-flower 
 had opened, spread its fragrance and 
 passed ; the purple vetch still lingered ;
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 the poppy raised an imperial head. 
 Clouds of gay, thieving sparrows rose 
 as we passed ; the crested lark ran before 
 us, sprang and hovered with a few notes 
 of liquid song ; tiny birds hung on the 
 barley blades ; the whistle of the quail 
 came from the deep green where it hid. 
 The river spread before us like a high- 
 way paved with sapphire ; so we passed 
 along it to the north and the voices 
 of the world we belonged to rung out 
 clearer as we moved ; and behind us 
 there faded like a dream that world 
 whose present is four thousand years of 
 time with the insistence of its silent 
 voices, the permanence of the dead, the 
 fleeting brightness of the living. 
 
 72
 
 THE SILENT ROMANCE
 
 THE SILENT ROMANCE 
 
 THE cock has been defying Achmet 
 Bukdadi again to-day. 
 
 It is a very little cock, hardly larger 
 than a bantam ; its plumage betokens 
 a fine disregard of race ; if you were 
 pressed you might suggest a remote 
 relationship to a game-cock. The 
 cries of Achmet Bukdadi drew me to 
 the window to see the cock, feathers 
 raised, parading angrily and scornfully 
 in front of him. Achmet's cries 
 75
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 attracted two or three other children, 
 and they ran about on our terrace 
 trying to hustle the cock off the edge 
 of it. Finally one courageous boy 
 lifted him by the wings, and put him 
 on the back of another, whence he 
 descended with feathers and dignity 
 ruffled to the ground, while the 
 children dispersed shrieking and 
 laughing. 
 
 Achmet had a more prompt ally 
 two days ago, when the cock was 
 doing sentry-go before their front yard 
 gate and would not let Achmet go 
 home. His cries called his mother 
 to his aid, and she came evidently 
 prepared for the crisis, for she straight- 
 way threw the wand which was in 
 her hand with unerring aim, and the
 
 The Silent Romance 
 
 cock fled vanquished down the village 
 rubbish-heap. 
 
 Achmet's mother is the most silent 
 and most graceful woman in the 
 village. She is the youngest of Buk- 
 dadi's two wives ; the other must 
 be the mother of the sullen looking 
 boy who lounges after our water- 
 donkey up and down the hill, for 
 she is grey haired, while Achmet's 
 mother has thick black plaits under 
 her blue head veil. She is not 
 indifferent to matters of dress, for her 
 outer wrapping is edged with crimson. 
 She seems far more active than the 
 other woman, and all her movements, 
 in the most menial occupation, show 
 an unconscious grace which tempts 
 one to the full use of unusual advan- 
 77
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 tages of observation. Her grace is 
 not the tender quality often so-called, 
 but a robust deftness and certainty of 
 action. She had to drive a lame 
 donkey to the water the other day, 
 and in the strokes of her staff there 
 was no more pity for the little beast, 
 halting and hurrying between two 
 diverse pains, than for her own 
 burdened womanhood. The donkey 
 must drink ; she herself would bring 
 water for the household in the great 
 earthenware pot balanced on her head. 
 Hesitation for the animal was as much 
 out of the question as help for her 
 from the stepson who lounged past 
 her with his stick held behind his 
 shoulders. 
 
 So she urged the animal to the 
 
 78
 
 The Silent Romance 
 
 pool beneath the tamarisks, and I 
 doubt not mounted the hill again with 
 all the speed that nature would allow. 
 
 It is well, perhaps, that she is 
 taciturn in a yard so populous the 
 other wife, the two sons, Bukdadi 
 himself, seldom seen, a girl, daughter 
 or slave, and the little Achmet, not 
 to speak of the animals the white 
 camel in the corner nearest the gate, 
 the neat black water-donkey next 
 him, for the invalid one occupies 
 the innermost corner, the bullocks 
 who move with deference at her 
 bidding, besides Achmet's enemy the 
 cock with his harim, and the pigeons. 
 I cannot be sure that the brown sheep 
 belong to this yard ; they are always 
 being driven out, it is true, but when- 
 79
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 ever they are not being driven out 
 they are going in ; and it appeared 
 that the black goat with two kids 
 was preparing to spend the night in 
 the hollow stem of the mud fungus, 
 on the family platform. What makes 
 conclusions less certain, however, is 
 that the grey kid now dances up and 
 down hill with the boy in the yellow- 
 striped dress, and that the sheep have 
 more than once called on us in our 
 dining-room. 
 
 Among all these Achmet's mother 
 moves, sober, taciturn, efficient. One 
 wonders when the transition comes 
 from the laughing children to the 
 serious, burdened woman. Marriage 
 is not the turning-point, for little 
 Sa'ida, with her round face and dark 
 80
 
 The Silent Romance 
 
 eyes and blue-patterned little chin, is 
 married, though she still prefers to 
 live with her father and be an occa- 
 sional visitor at her husband's house. 
 And what there is of demureness in 
 Sai'da compared to the ragged Ahm 
 Ibrahim in wild neglected gaiety is 
 produced evidently not by her marriage 
 but by her blue dress and her red 
 dress, her necklace and her earrings. 
 
 The burden of the household, but 
 above all the care of the children, must 
 work the change, and the trace of 
 tenderness that there is about Achmet's 
 mother seems all for Achmet. She 
 exercises no repressive influence on 
 him, for Achmet, with his grubby 
 black dress, his thin, merry, ugly little 
 face with even rows of little white 
 81 F
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 teeth as he lisps his greeting Achmet, 
 whether cantering about 1 on a dhurra 
 stalk, or pretending to be a man 
 carrying stones with his grandfather, 
 or climbing over his neighbours' walls, 
 is always gay. 
 
 He takes the unexpected gift with- 
 out that deliberate anticipation of 
 favours to come which is the first 
 acquirement of the Arab baby ; and 
 in his pleasures and his woes alike 
 Achmet flies to his mother, conveys 
 to her his bakshish of sugar-cane ; 
 wails to her when the cock is warlike 
 and threatening. 
 
 She had him with her one evening 
 in the great mud chalice which 
 forms larder, barn, and summer 
 chamber of the Arab house. 
 82
 
 The Silent Romance 
 
 The sun had gone down, but a 
 certain unreal glow lay on the hill 
 behind the village ; night was purpling 
 the sky ; her figure rose out of the 
 shadowy cup powerful and graceful, 
 with the child crouched at her feet ; 
 the work of the day was over, her 
 heart's desire was with her. 
 
 To-day she could not come to the 
 child when he called, for but two 
 nights ago there was a movement 
 and whispering at midnight in the 
 yard of Bukdadi, and the wail arose 
 of a voice smaller and younger than 
 that of little Achmet. So the mother 
 rests.
 
 THE COURT OF THE KING
 
 VI 
 THE COURT OF THE KING 
 
 "Sealed within the iron hills." 
 
 THE APPROACH 
 
 THE moon had risen as we rode 
 down the steep, sandy road and 
 threaded our way through the little 
 mud enclosures, where dogs, alive for 
 the excitement of the night, were 
 prowling on the walls, listening with 
 ears pricked up for warnings of 
 enemies, looking with vigilant eyes 
 87
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 for some alien to draw near. As 
 we crossed into that part of the village 
 where they did not know us, a hoarse 
 storm of barking filled the air, but 
 in a minute or two we had passed 
 beyond this, and were out among the 
 sand-hills between the tombs, where 
 the whole plain was flooded with a 
 misty, uncertain light. 
 
 Song and merry-making had begun 
 in the villages, for the full moon is 
 festival for those who have no artificial 
 light ; but the thud of the drums, the 
 sound of children's voices, and the 
 barking of dogs faded and died away, 
 and we came out into a great emptiness, 
 threading a narrow path between the 
 tumbled heaps ; on each side the 
 tombs gaped dimly at our feet. On 
 88
 
 
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 the right hand we looked far away 
 over desert and field to the great dark 
 pylons of a temple across the river : on 
 the left rose sharply the sandy spur 
 of the hill we were rounding. No 
 one was in sight and on no side could 
 we see any human habitation. 
 
 We turned round the spur of the 
 hill into a boulder-strewn valley, arid 
 and silent. Even at midday there 
 is little sign of life here, except on 
 certain days when a stream of people 
 traverse it and return ; otherwise you 
 find but a chance sown seed, dropped 
 in a favourable spot ; a withering 
 leaf let fall by some traveller, a stray 
 pigeon, an " evil bird " the Arabs 
 think, who has left the abode of men 
 and foresworn its final service for
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 their use, to live its hermit life in 
 the wilderness. Otherwise you see 
 but the golden limestone rocks, 
 radiating back the golden Egyptian 
 sunshine. Then all is bare and keeps 
 no secret, for the very shadows are 
 broken by reflected light. 
 
 But now the colour of the lime- 
 stone showed but faintly in the white 
 light, and the shadows fell dark from 
 boulder and rocks. The valley was 
 empty of life, penetrated with mystery. 
 
 There, as we turned, at an angle of 
 the path was a figure, solitary in the 
 moonlight, a man in a long, dark 
 garment, holding by him his donkey 
 with a sheepskin over its saddle. He 
 stood waiting here to give us a 
 message, and having delivered it went 
 90
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 back by the way we had come. And 
 now looking back we could see 
 nothing of mud village or vast old 
 temple, no living man of the present, 
 no stone memorial of the past ; we 
 were alone in a world half lit, wholly 
 empty, stone and sand as far as eye 
 could see, with an empty sky above 
 where the moon had quenched all lesser 
 lights. 
 
 The valley, which we began to see 
 more clearly, was narrow and rose 
 steeply on each side ; the ground 
 beneath our feet looked like a river- 
 bed, on each side of which were large 
 boulders casting deep black shadows. 
 From time to time the rocks which 
 walled the valley so crossed one another 
 that it seemed the way was barred
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 in front of us, until, as we neared it, we 
 found the road swept round a corner of 
 rock. Turning such a corner, again 
 we found three people silently awaiting 
 us, two of them the companions who 
 had preceded us ; the third a slim 
 figure all in white, on foot with 
 a staff in his hand. He was a man 
 of some authority over the guard, who, 
 as we learned later, had lain seven 
 years in jail for a murder. He ran 
 with noiseless steps in front of us, and 
 so heralded we went on to where 
 the valley broadened out a little, 
 branching to the right ; and at the 
 entrance a great rock jutting out of 
 the cliff seemed in the moonlight to 
 take a fantastic likeness to some 
 colossal statue of a king, carved, you 
 92
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 would have said, by an Egyptian of 
 old. 
 
 Our path led us to the left, and here 
 the cliffs began to close in on us, until 
 they rose like a wall on each side of a 
 narrow way, at once so steep and so 
 rugged that we could not tell whether 
 the defile was natural or the work ot 
 man. It led at last to where a wall 
 of rock, barring the way, had been 
 rudely cut through. In this rough 
 gateway we halted behind us the 
 rocky passage through which we had 
 come ; before us, as far as we could 
 see, the hills ran down, like a great 
 amphitheatre, to a floor of tumbled 
 sand-heaps. 
 
 Here, as we halted, one of our 
 companions blew a whistle, and the 
 93
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 next moment the hills re-echoed to 
 the sound of a gun. After a moment's 
 pause he blew again, and now dark- 
 draped figures suddenly appeared 
 among the desolate rocks, running 
 noiselessly towards us. After a 
 moment all but two or three dispersed 
 again, and we rode forward with the 
 white, slim figure still in front and 
 two men in flowing dark garments 
 following us behind. 
 
 The great emptiness, the silence, 
 the white, uncertain light by which 
 the rocks showed faintly tinged with 
 the rose and golden colour of the 
 limestone, the dark figures suddenly 
 appearing, noiselessly moving, dispers- 
 ing into the night ; the strange, 
 desolate valley winding through all 
 94
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 apparent barriers into the heart of 
 the hills seemed like a dream. Sur- 
 prise vanished ; even observation was 
 dulled. 
 
 So we went forward to the head of 
 the valley, ringed about with sheer 
 mountain walls, and perceived that 
 here the mounds which lay about 
 the way gaped with open mouths, and 
 we could see the moonlight shining 
 through grated doors on the painted 
 walls of galleries that ran down deep 
 into the hill. 
 
 These we passed, and dismounting 
 from our beasts, climbed a little 
 mound, turned behind a projecting 
 buttress of rock, and found ourselves 
 opposite to a door cut in the cliff. 
 One of the men who had followed us 
 95
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 went in and left us for a while sitting 
 without in the moonlight. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 The great square doorway of the 
 tomb showed inky black on the face 
 of the cliff, golden in the moonlight ; 
 the shaft plunged steeply downwards 
 into the rock, with short, high steps 
 roughly cut against one wall. Down 
 these we slowly made our way, the 
 utter darkness pricked here and there 
 by the flame of a candle in some one's 
 hand. A flame shone for a moment on 
 the little shelf cut back into the rock, 
 where the string bed and wooden pillow 
 of the guard still wait his return, just 
 where he went out and left them so
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 many thousand years ago. The steps 
 stopped suddenly on the edge of a pit 
 deep and broad ; by the light of a 
 candle held high we could dimly see 
 the red and blue patterns painted on 
 its plastered walls. A hole had been 
 broken through them on the opposite 
 side of the chasm, and crossing by a 
 little plank bridge we crept through, 
 still deeper into the heart of the cliff. 
 On the other side of the wall the 
 tunnel still went downwards, but the 
 faint light showed a deep alcove to 
 the right. On the rocky floor lay a 
 man, bound upon a crumbling wooden 
 boat ; the painful bonds still held the 
 brown and shrivelled limbs, his knees 
 drawn up, his head pressed back. 
 Again down the steep stairway we 
 97 G
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 climbed, feeling along the rough-cut 
 wall, and again at the bottom a 
 chamber opened to the right. A 
 man, a woman, and a girl lie here, 
 side by side in the middle of the 
 floor. They have suffered the indignity 
 of stripping ; wounds are in their 
 breasts ; the thick black hair upon 
 their heads makes the small faces 
 and limbs seem the more withered 
 and unhuman. It is a pitiful sight. 
 
 For the third time the rock-hewn 
 ladder led us down to the square- 
 cut doorway which opened to the 
 presence-chamber of a king of 
 Egypt. The great hall stretched back 
 into the darkness, dimly lighted by 
 hidden candles, heavy with the silence 
 of three thousand years. The faint
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 gleam fell upon the painted walls and 
 pillars of the eternal dwelling-place, 
 the work of such far-off hands clear 
 and fresh with the freshness of 
 yesterday. On the great square pillars 
 Amenhetep still feels the fullness of 
 his earthly life and draws strength 
 from mysterious communing with the 
 life-giving god. On the walls a huge 
 papyrus seems unrolled where the 
 spirit of the King, in the depth of 
 the nether world, may learn to wrestle 
 with and overthrow the serpent- 
 monsters brought by each gloomy 
 Hour. At the back of the hall two 
 steps lead down to the high vaulted 
 space where stands the great rose- 
 granite sarcophagus. In the darkness 
 and the silence the lid or the inner 
 99
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 coffin was raised and we were in the 
 presence of the King. 
 
 The dim-veiled figure lay before us, 
 wrapt in an inexpressible mystery, the 
 impress of his kingship still upon him, 
 crowned with the greater dignity of 
 death. Far from the loved Egyptian 
 sunshine, from the sweet breath of 
 the north wind, from the fleeting 
 ways of men, the inhabitant of the 
 rock holds his solemn court through 
 the centuries which have no power 
 upon him, with the records of his life 
 and warfare around him and the 
 mimosa wreaths upon his breast. 
 
 [Since the above was written plunderers pene- 
 trated into the tomb in the absence of the guard, 
 and the body of Amenhetep II. no longer rests in 
 his Eternal Habitation.] 
 
 ICO
 
 THE GOLDEN DAHABEAH
 
 VII 
 THE GOLDEN DAHABEAH 
 
 I 
 
 MAHMOUD was crouched on the hot 
 sand, in the shade of a great granite 
 figure of an old Egyptian king. On 
 the temple wall at his right hand was 
 incised the figure of a large hawk, 
 which had a certain life-like stare and 
 stride. Below lay the thick green 
 lake ; a little pied kingfisher fluttered 
 and poised over it. Mahmoud's don- 
 key had strayed a little from his 
 103
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 owner, and was pulling at some few 
 blades of thin, straggling weed. The 
 Father of the Box, who had ridden 
 him out to Karnak, had some foolish 
 prejudice against tying up donkeys' 
 heads. Mahmoud explained that it 
 prevented the donkey from having a 
 headache ; but Englishmen always want 
 things done in their own way. 
 
 Yet as Mahmoud sat dreaming, his 
 eyes fixed on the water, he was thinking 
 of none of these things. Rather he 
 was dreaming of little Fatma, Fatma 
 whom he had run and played with as 
 a little girl but now she was old 
 enough to be married. He had seen 
 Fatma as they came out ; she was 
 carrying a waterpot on her head, and 
 the slender fingers were tipped with 
 104
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 henna ; her hair was plaited over her 
 brow, and the large blue-studded rings 
 in her ears swayed as she ran. She 
 held her veil firmly in her small, white 
 teeth, and only gave him one look, 
 half shy, half merry, as she passed. 
 
 Mahmoud's father and mother said 
 he must be married this year. He 
 wished to marry no one but little 
 Fatma ; but ah ! the marriage- 
 gift. 
 
 He stared at the smooth, thick 
 water, and droned a little song " Oh, 
 great holy gardener, let me into the 
 garden." 
 
 The sun was just going down, and 
 
 as Mahmoud turned idly, half lost in 
 
 his dreaming, the rays struck the wall 
 
 where was the image of the hawk, 
 
 105
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 and the boy stood breathless, for the 
 hawk was all of gold, and as he 
 looked the fierce head turned a little. 
 
 Through his maze came the voice of 
 the Father of the Box, crying to him 
 to get the donkey. 
 
 A moment he started and turned, 
 but when he looked again there was 
 nothing but the stone hawk carved on 
 the wall ; and again came the call, as 
 the Englishman and the " box " came 
 round the corner. 
 
 Mahmoud gasped and panted : " The 
 chicken is all gold." 
 
 " Oh, the Golden Horus," said the 
 Father of the Box, giving the precious 
 camera into Mahmoud's hand. " Hurry 
 up and fetch the donkey, it is getting 
 dark and damp." 
 
 1 06
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 But he did not ask how a donkey- 
 boy should know the Golden Horus. 
 
 II 
 
 The donkey-boys were sitting out- 
 side the garden gate of the hotel. Mah- 
 moud was against the wall, and taking 
 little part in the flow of conversation. 
 
 " Achmet Effendi will make a big 
 feast to-morrow," said one. " He has 
 killed two sheep for his feast." 
 
 " Achmet Effendi is a very rich 
 man," said Maouad. " Twenty years 
 ago he sent his servant Gameel Gameel 
 to dig up stones to burn and lay on his 
 field, there where the English " sidi 
 matre" (cemetery) is. But Gameel 
 107
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 Gameel found a big pot of golden coins 
 and he brought them all back to 
 Achmet Effendi. For ten years they 
 kept them hidden, then Achmet Effendi 
 sold them for much money and became 
 a rich man. That is why he loves 
 Gameel Gameel better than his son." 
 
 " Gameel Gameel was a great fool," 
 said Hassan flippantly. " Why should 
 he not become a rich man himself? " 
 
 Kuku was speaking aside to Gorgius. 
 
 " I tell my lady that I am going to 
 be married to Fatma. I say to her : 
 ' I see Fatma in the market ; I like her 
 very much and she likes me very much. 
 My mother has arranged it for me. If 
 you give me an English handkerchief,' 
 I say to my lady, ' you shall come to 
 my wedding.' ' 
 
 108
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 "Liar-boy ! " said Gorgius scornfully ; 
 but Mahmoud feared and sighed in 
 himself. 
 
 A small figure passed, and the 
 light from the gas lamp showed a 
 withered old man with a white beard 
 and smiling face. He wore a red 
 tarbush turbaned about with white, 
 and trailed a green Mecca robe. 
 
 " Mohammed Mohassib will have a 
 big feast," said one. " He has killed a 
 camel and made soup with it. The 
 Father of the Beard said to Mohammed, 
 ' You will feed three hundred men to- 
 morrow.' Mohammed said, * I hope 
 more than that.' ' 
 
 " Mohammed Mohassib slept in the 
 temple of Mut," said Maouad ; " that 
 was fifty years ago, when he was a boy. 
 109
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 When the sun rose Mohammed saw 
 the golden hawk. He ran to catch it, 
 but it flew away into the sky. One 
 feather fell from it, and Mohammed 
 Mohassib picked it up. Then he -was 
 a lucky man and became rich, and went 
 to Mecca, and to-morrow he will feed 
 more than three hundred men." 
 
 Mahmoud's ear was caught for the 
 second time. " If a man sees the 
 golden bird will he be a lucky man ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Oh, it is Mahmoud who will be 
 the lucky man," said Hassan, with a 
 laugh. " To-morrow when Abu el 
 Haggag has done with his boat 
 we shall set it to float on the Lake of 
 Karnak, and Mahmoud shall see it 
 all golden at night and shall swim out 
 no
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 to it. But Mahmoud, he never speaks, 
 so when the sun strikes it the boat of 
 Abu el Haggag will be for Mahmoud." 
 
 A short silence followed this profane 
 speech, for Abu el Haggag is the 
 great Saint of Luxor, and next day 
 they held the procession of his sacred 
 boat. 
 
 But Hassan rattled on. " I make 
 no feast to-morrow. Everybody else 
 makes a feast. Nasr says every time 
 he sees his lady he says, c I have 
 bought some sheep and some rice, and 
 my wife has mixed them together like 
 so ; my wife has made balls of them, 
 and she will put them in the oven to 
 bake them. And I will bring you 
 some.' Every time he says that. I 
 would not eat Nasr's balls. I will go 
 in
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 to Rameses Bar and spend money and 
 drink whisky." 
 
 His audacity succeeded in making 
 itself heard, which was chiefly what he 
 wanted. And he went on : " Mah- 
 moud gets little money from the 
 Father of the Box. I say to the Father 
 of the Box when he rides my donkey, 
 ' Give me more money, this is too little.' 
 He says, ' Then I will beat you.' But 
 I say to the Mother of the Nose, ' I 
 am a very poor boy ; I am only ten 
 years old. My father send away my 
 mother. Who shall give my mother 
 money ? ' Then she says, ' Oh, poor 
 boy ! here is some money.' I like these 
 ladies. They are very foolish." 
 
 "Did you say to the Mother of 
 the Nose ' My mother is married again 
 112
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 to a rich man,' oh liar ? " asked 
 Mahmoud. 
 
 But at this moment the garden gate 
 opened and a babel of voices arose : 
 " Take 1 my donkey ; take my donkey ; 
 de best donkey in Luxor." " Here is 
 Whisky and Soda ; no donkey like so." 
 " Never you believe nobody. Liar 
 boy. Here is Rameses. Every day 
 he win a race. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Abu el Haggag's boat had come and 
 passed, poor starveling representative 
 of the longest pedigree in the world. 
 Here passed of old the Sacred Bark of 
 the gods, carrying the precious images 
 113 H
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 and emblems, the king burning incense 
 before it, the oxen lotus-garlanded for 
 the sacrifice. 
 
 And later this sacred bark lent its 
 outward form to the Ark of the Most 
 High God, bearing the simple symbols 
 of justice and mercy, in the long desert 
 wanderings and in the Holy Land. 
 
 And now the poor, sordid boat on its 
 little truck passed round ; charcoal 
 burned instead of incense. With the 
 feeble tradition the Arabs tell that it 
 was the boat in which Abu the Saint 
 went to see his friends. This is all 
 that is left in their minds of that most 
 ancient idea this and the golden 
 vision of the boat at midnight on 
 Karnak Lake. 
 
 The droning noises of Arab music 
 114
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 had died down as Mahmoud ran through 
 Luxor ; a few beggars cleared the 
 remnants of the feast of Mohammed 
 Mohassib ; while the old man stood 
 smiling in his doorway over the 
 memory of his lordly hospitality. 
 He nodded kindly to Mahmoud 
 running by. 
 
 After he passed the house Mahmoud 
 paused ; he did not dare to go on this 
 way highway though it was for he 
 feared above all the afreet-haunted 
 bridge that he would have to pass. So 
 he turned, and running down a narrow 
 way crossed the empty market-place 
 and came out on the field road. 
 
 The light was dying down and the 
 sky was cloudy ; there was little mist, 
 but the scent of beanfields hung heavy 
 "5
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 on the air ; the corn-blades rustled as 
 his dress swept them, running. The 
 barking of the village dogs died down 
 behind him into silence, so that he 
 started and nearly fell when a little 
 cue-owl mewed suddenly from a carob- 
 tree. 
 
 Down into the cutting, and as he 
 mounted again his heart leaped into 
 his mouth, for a dark figure rose up 
 above the corn. Then he remembered 
 that it was only the great lion-headed 
 statue that sat lonely in the fields, and 
 he took courage again. 
 
 When he came to the road he 
 paused, debating. Which of the two 
 ways to the Lake ? By the one he 
 would have to pass the spot where 
 that fierce golden bird had turned to 
 116
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 look at him yesterday. By the other 
 way he must go up the dark sphinx 
 avenue, a very haunt of afreets. To 
 go on either way was dreadful ; to 
 stay here not less so ; to go back, he 
 was persuaded now, would be to lose 
 Fatma. 
 
 He turned to the left and entered 
 the sphinx avenue. A half-grown 
 moon struggling with the clouds now 
 and again threw straggling and sharp 
 shadows of the palm leaves across his 
 path, but more dreadful was the dry 
 rustling of the leaves on high when 
 a cloud passed ; before him loomed the 
 great arch. On each side the sphinxes 
 crouched like strange creatures 
 with narrow, beak-like noses 
 seemed in the darkness ready to spring. 
 117
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 And that great black nodding palm- 
 tree, surely that was an afreet too, 
 and might catch him. But up the 
 path bordered with horror he still 
 ran. 
 
 Now he must turn to the right, 
 before the arch is reached ; and but 
 a short way farther pass those four 
 images of great old kings mutilated, 
 but not the less uncanny and fearful 
 in this dim light. They seemed to 
 look down on the little figure still 
 running ; but he had passed in safety, 
 and there lay the lake, black and still 
 like the pool of ink in which men 
 saw strange visions. 
 
 Mahmoud said his prayer and praise 
 and lay down to sleep by the 
 lake. . . . 
 
 118
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 IV 
 
 The first time Mahmoud woke the 
 moon had won the battle, and was 
 shining on the temple, turning all to 
 unreal, ethereal building, faintly roseate, 
 a temple seen in a dream. Mahmoud 
 looked towards the lake and all was 
 still ; the moon made a white sheet 
 of water. 
 
 The second time Mahmoud woke 
 the moon was down, but from the 
 lake came a light soft, lambent, golden. 
 He looked towards it, and oh the glory, 
 the wonder ! a golden boat was riding 
 on the water. 
 
 Mahmoud had often seen under 
 the hot sun, in some ripple ot desert 
 119
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 sand, a sudden sheet of water. In the 
 middle it was clear water, bright, 
 reflecting the edge of cultivated land. 
 At the margin it was uncertain ; no 
 eye could tell where it melted into 
 the shaking haze of heat. So here, 
 the middle of the boat was clear and 
 distinct, and on the deck was standing 
 one single figure ; but at the stern and 
 prow, though he saw figures he saw 
 them dimly, the outlines of them 
 melted into the gold reflection of the 
 water. 
 
 The central figure on the deck he 
 marked from head to foot. He says 
 he has seen the face outlined on some 
 temple wall, but he can never find it. 
 He says, too, it was not unlike the 
 father of Gorgius the Copt donkey-boy. 
 120
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 But the father of Gorgius, he added, 
 was only a fellah-man ; this was a 
 great man, greater than the Khedive 
 of Egypt, as great as a King of 
 England. 
 
 But of one thing he is certain : not 
 only had the figure a strange erection 
 on his head, but he wore a lion's 
 tail behind. Mahmoud's eyes were so 
 riveted to the figure that he could not 
 tell how the boat moved. He said 
 something about a sail and something 
 about oars ; but this he knew, that 
 though it moved on with its golden 
 reflection over the lake, it stirred no 
 water in front and no widening ripple 
 ran out behind. 
 
 It was drawing to the shore, and 
 suddenly, as if it had come within 
 121
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 focus, the prow was clear to him, 
 with a man leaping down to the 
 land, a coil of golden rope upon his 
 arm. 
 
 What passed next was but the 
 work of an instant. Without rising 
 to his feet Mahmoud shot down like 
 a snake among the stones, and as the 
 man coiled the rope round a rock 
 he seized it. 
 
 As the lightning flash strikes across 
 the sky, so the man with this golden 
 light upon him leaped back ; and into 
 the waters of the lake, into the golden 
 reflection, sank the boat, without sound 
 or ripple. 
 
 Mahmoud was standing alone by 
 the black pool in the light of the 
 stars under the lonely night. But 
 122
 
 The Golden Dahabeah 
 
 by the light of the stars he saw in 
 his scarred and bleeding hand the 
 strands of the golden rope. 
 
 Now Mahmoud trails the Mecca 
 
 robe through the streets of Luxor, 
 
 but they say that Fatma wears the 
 golden rope. 
 
 123
 
 THE UNSEEN WORLD
 
 VIII 
 THE UNSEEN WORLD 
 
 THE whole world had faded and 
 darkened to a uniform tint, black and 
 dingy. The woman who stood there 
 could hardly say whether this tint 
 were brown or grey, for there was no 
 colour to contrast it with, nothing but 
 her own black dress seen through the 
 same sordid medium. In front of her, 
 rather lighter in tint, she could see a 
 few inches of parapet, on which her 
 hands were lying, and dimly could 
 127
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 discern the ground at her feet. If 
 she leant over the parapet she could 
 not see the water, but where she 
 believed it to be, something like the 
 shadow of a ripple moved across the 
 dusk. 
 
 And as for want of contrast she could 
 determine no colour, so for want of 
 distance she could determine no size. 
 All she saw could be enclosed by four 
 small walls ; all she could not see might 
 reveal miles of river-bank, streets of 
 stately houses. It was not the Infinite 
 but the Indetermined that she looked 
 upon. Noises had sunk into a hoarse 
 murmur and swell, dulled as by this 
 thick, heavy medium. No such mono- 
 tony of existence could be conceived ; 
 a world of shadows, an Isle of Voices, 
 128
 
 The Unseen World 
 
 would be life itself to this. And yet 
 she believed herself to be standing in 
 the heart of the greatest city in the 
 world, but a few paces removed from 
 streets where men and women were 
 moving up and down ; where her face 
 was turned across the water stood (she 
 believed) a great house, a town garden 
 where wood-pigeons built, and where 
 she had seen lilies of the valley flower, 
 saying softly to herself : 
 
 " Here in dust and dirt, oh here, 
 The lilies of His love appear." 
 
 How was it possible that in so short 
 a time such a change should fall, such 
 a swallowing up of life as the centuries 
 cannot bring to the cities of the south ? 
 
 Truly she was living by faith in a blank 
 129 j
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 world of existence. A foot or two of 
 parapet each side of her hands ; a foot 
 or two of gravel each side of her feet 
 beyond that limit nothingness. Yet 
 by faith she would move in this void. 
 
 She turned to the left and walked 
 along the path which appeared step 
 by step as she paced, until in front of 
 her the shadow of a building fell upon 
 the fog : cornerwise it rose, fading into 
 mist, and likewise vanished a few feet 
 above her head. 
 
 Yet she believed that this was a great 
 tower ; she believed that the building 
 stretched away from her, and that at 
 that moment, gathered inside its halls, 
 was the Council of the Nation. It is 
 strange if you think of it, how firmly 
 she believed in that invisible building, 
 130
 
 The Unseen World 
 
 in those inaudible deliberations, in the 
 reality of its connection with the 
 isolated fragments of parapet and path 
 fragments without visible support, 
 the only things she could see and the 
 least of all she believed in. 
 
 For as she believed in a present 
 invisible, so she believed in a future 
 uncreated ; that she should presently 
 return from where she stood to her 
 own house, the fragment of visible 
 world opening before her and above her, 
 closing behind her as she went. If 
 she could not find the way, other 
 figures dawning on her, fog-enwrapped, 
 would direct her. Strange how she 
 believed in their existence, though she 
 could neither see nor hear them, how 
 she trusted in their good faith, though
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 she knew neither who they were nor 
 whence they would come, in their 
 greater knowledge, though all men 
 were more or less astray in the same 
 fog. 
 
 So resting peaceably in this belief 
 she looked again over the parapet. 
 
 A shadow on blank colourlessness in 
 front ; a splash as of water to the ear. 
 The shadow deepened, defined itself, 
 and out of nothingness grew a great 
 black barge ; it seemed to float on 
 water that she could not see. Two 
 men, one with body bent forward, one 
 with body swayed back, swung a great 
 oar at the stern. They were steering 
 in this indistinguishable world ; in this 
 chaos of a world, threading their way 
 between dangers undiscerned till ruin 
 132
 
 The Unseen W^orld 
 
 was impending. Now the black out- 
 line was opposite to her and now the 
 barge was shortened, and still the two 
 figures swayed and bent, swayed and 
 bent, at their steering. The dark vision 
 faded into darkness again. Out of 
 nothing grew that barge, into nothing 
 it went. 
 
 The third thing she saw was this : 
 just below the parapet where the fog 
 was least thick, out of nothingness came 
 a bird, like a little white spirit. It 
 was smaller than a seagull ; its wings, 
 delicately shaded with brown, showed 
 a sharper outline, and round them 
 ran a dark line ; the head too was 
 dark. 
 
 A moment it hung below her lightly 
 poised, white wings uplifted, head 
 '33
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 down-bent, feet down-dropped towards 
 the flood below. Then this too 
 vanished in the mist. 
 
 And having seen that she went 
 away content. 
 
 '34
 
 FROM THE BANK OF THE RIVER
 
 IX 
 
 FROM THE BANK OF THE 
 RIVER 
 
 I 
 
 IN a room in an hotel of the south 
 some one was lying ill. It was March, 
 and an airless, parching heat lay outside, 
 the palms drooped yellow leaves, the 
 bee-eaters chattering on a carob-bush 
 dived luxuriantly into corn so green 
 that they were in no wise distinguished 
 from it ; they turned and fluttered like 
 butterflies, and from the bronze wing 
 137
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 feathers a sheen of gold rippled over 
 their emerald in the sun. 
 
 Inside the room was as cool as it 
 might be ; when, from time to time, 
 the shutters were opened the glory of 
 gold and green outside flashed into 
 sight. Outside life was heavy with 
 heat, luxuriant, substantial ; bounded, 
 limited and weighed down by its very 
 fullness. 
 
 Inside life had dwindled to a thin 
 thread of consciousness, or rather it 
 seemed like two strands worn nearly 
 to breaking lying side by side. The 
 one, the actual physical consciousness 
 of a corporal life ebbing, of breath 
 drawn with difficulty ; of physical 
 sensation not perhaps actually painful, 
 but almost altogether wearying a con- 
 138
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 sciousness close to that mysterious 
 land of delusions, where the physical 
 symptoms are set apart from the 
 personal consciousness and become ex- 
 ternal antagonistic forces. It was not 
 intolerable because it was becoming a 
 thing more and more external, more 
 separate from that other spiritual con- 
 sciousness with which it was still 
 lightly entwined. 
 
 And that other thread of being, how 
 shall one describe it ? It was not quite 
 continuous, for now and again the 
 physical sensation numbed it ; now and 
 then, when times of refreshment came, 
 the other like a stream rose and 
 engulfed it. 
 
 Compare that old image of the 
 Rhone and the Saone. The one flows 
 139
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 on, blue, clear, transparent ; the other 
 side by side, turbulent, muddy and 
 swift. The man lying here seemed 
 to himself to be both, but most of 
 all the clearer thinner stream. The 
 turbulence, the force of the other is 
 daily less and less himself, more and 
 more an alien power to which he 
 yet jealously clings in the body of 
 this death, and will not, cannot part 
 from it. 
 
 And from time to time comes a 
 new impulse of the stronger torrent 
 its yellowing waters tinge the blue 
 it is fuller, and there is a sense of 
 well-being ; and yet that transparent 
 river of spiritual being, clear as crystal, 
 has been sullied, it has disappeared. 
 
 Such little trivial things too will 
 140
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 give him back the life which is his 
 power and his bondage ; the cup of 
 iced coffee, that he looks for and can 
 drink when other food nauseates, this 
 makes him feel that he lives again and 
 yet kills that clearer, sweeter, finer, 
 life ; as much, in a sense, as over- 
 powering bodily discomfort kills it 
 more, perhaps, for the more it over- 
 powers the more external it is, the 
 less it is himself. 
 
 If only he can keep from fear, for 
 that kills all. And yet this thread of 
 consciousness, which I have called 
 spiritual, is not thinking any thought, 
 it is seeing visions, and these visions 
 are not of another world but of the 
 sweeter, purer things of this world, 
 transfigured and serene. He is a child 
 141
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 again in a Cornish lane, and the grass 
 is deep and dewy, the banks are high, 
 crowned with little bushes nearly bare of 
 leaf, for it is spring ; deep in the grass 
 are primroses, long stalked and growing 
 by the handful, you can thrust your 
 hand into the damp grass, rich in little 
 ferns and unnamed leaves, and pluck 
 them so ; between the primroses there 
 are violets are they purple or grey or 
 blue ? and here and there a celandine, 
 golden yellow. Or he is a boy 
 sitting on a rock ; his feet are bare, 
 the sea is shallow round him, the 
 ripples run out, and the sun shining 
 through them laces the fine sand below 
 with gold. He tells the nurses that 
 as soon as he is well he will go to 
 the sea and dip his feet in it. 
 142
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 Then he thinks of music that he 
 knows, and it comes with unutterable 
 sweetness of cadence like music heard 
 in dreams. 
 
 And this radiance lies not only on 
 things imagined but on things seen. 
 The roses brought into the room are 
 the roses of Dorothea ; the scent of 
 the palm, in blossom outside, fills the 
 room with an ethereal fragrance ; and 
 oh, those clusters of waxen palm 
 flowers that his friends bring in and 
 place in the green jug, surely it 
 must come from that tree whose very 
 leaves are for the healing of the 
 nations ! 
 
 It is only at night that the horror 
 comes no nameless horror, but the 
 horror of fighting with the darkness ; 
 
 143
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 it is hot, and it stifles. The doctors 
 have been, and he knows their report 
 is not good though no one has told 
 him so. The medicine bottles begin 
 to change ; there is one like a 
 knight's head near the candle, he 
 knows it is only a cork in it, but it 
 is very like the armoured head of a 
 knight ; and the darkness comes near, 
 it oppresses all, laying a heavy hand 
 on the world : it is too near, too 
 heavy, all round us and weighing on 
 us above. 
 
 He sleeps, to shout at the people 
 in the room he asks the nurse to 
 expel the Arab who is beside the bed. 
 He knows they are not there at all, 
 but he does not want to sleep, for he 
 will wake in that horrible strangle 
 144
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 of breath. It is so long, if only there 
 were any light at all ! Weary, inter- 
 minable length, and some lines of a 
 poem run in his mind : 
 
 " An hour or two more and God is so kind 
 The day will be blue in the window blind." 
 
 " Thank the kind God the carts come in." 
 
 They come in so early in London. 
 Only an hour or two is quiet in the 
 night, and you would know that the 
 world is alive again, one would not 
 have to keep the darkness long at bay ; 
 but here the night is day-long. Brandy 
 what is the good ? The smell is nau- 
 seating ; but it is at his lips, and he 
 drinks. Has he slept ? but it is black 
 and still and dark, the dogs howl and 
 
 145 K.
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 scuffle past the window. Hours more 
 to come, hours of the blackness. One 
 of these people who is about the room 
 sits down by the bed. She is not 
 terrifying. She is only an old lady 
 with grey hair, but she expects some- 
 thing. She must be told to go away ; 
 they will not tell her, and he is angry 
 with urging. But of course she was 
 not really there, it was only a dream ; 
 so he must have slept again, and the 
 minutes must have passed. 
 
 There is a hint of grey in the sky, 
 the whisper of a breeze in the palm 
 leaves dawn is coming. Now there 
 is one hour of horror to go through, 
 for the windows must be shut ; he 
 cannot breathe he cannot live like 
 this for an hour. The door into the 
 146
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 passage may be opened, and the nurse's 
 step falls cold and echoing on the stone 
 outside ; no one else is moving, it is all 
 grey and cold ; he knows how that 
 empty passage must look. This is 
 better, for the blackness is going. 
 
 He sees the palm-trees outside above 
 the muslin blinds ; all the world is still 
 and dead, its light gone out, but it can 
 be rekindled. From the other window 
 nothing can be seen but colourless sky, 
 but the sky itself begins to kindle into 
 life. 
 
 Suddenly something falls across the 
 muslin blind ; a bar, and a dot of sun- 
 light, of that molten gold of Egyptian 
 sunshine before the day has dried it 
 into dust of gold. Oh the extra- 
 ordinary beauty of that gold ! Has 
 H7
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 sunshine been always in the world 
 before, and yet we never knew it was 
 like that ? The darkness has passed, 
 the light shines, the rapture and the 
 beauty of the light spreads and 
 broadens ; the sky is awake, the garden 
 is alive, the night is gone and now 
 the window towards the south is 
 thrown open, and very faint and fair, 
 a delicate violet light lies on the hills 
 beyond the river. The air is blown in 
 sweet, fragrant, unspeakably pure ; and 
 that carob-tree on which the birds sat 
 yesterday is green and fresh, and below 
 is the blue-green of the corn into 
 which they dropped. 
 
 An Arab is riding on his camel along 
 the dyke, they are outlined against that 
 purple hill. So people still live and 
 148
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 move outside ; they can move then, they 
 can go where they wish. But he sees 
 the sun, and the breath of heaven 
 comes in, and the night is passed. He 
 is tired with this warring against the 
 night, but the light has come and the 
 clearer, brighter river is flowing again. 
 This is day. 
 
 What is this land where the spirit 
 has been living ? Is it the land of 
 Beulah or the Valley of the Shadow ? 
 Which is most real ? He knows which 
 is most substantial, but why is it most 
 real ? The instrument is more sub- 
 stantial than the melody and infinitely 
 less real. Yet when the veil grows 
 thin which hides the glory of the 
 vision, agonizing we entreat that it 
 may not be removed and show the 
 glory of the face. 
 
 149
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 II 
 
 " The luminous 
 Star-inwrought, beautiful 
 Folds of the Veil." 
 
 MANY have written of the journey 
 down to the dark river ; few have 
 told of the road backward from the 
 river's brink ; a road of sudden ecstasies 
 and sordid pitfalls. 
 
 For the radiance lay over the earth 
 when he turned his face to it again. 
 Nothing was ever sweeter than the 
 sight of palm leaves against the blue 
 upon the banks of the Nile. As 
 the shores streamed past, with the rosy 
 hills and yellow lights above them, 
 150
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 winged feluccas furling sail, or sweep- 
 ing like birds across the blue, with 
 the roaring of the swiftness of their 
 motion, he could lie and look weary 
 with rapture watching the figures 
 sprung from the old Palestinian story 
 a rugged Peter wrapping his fisher's 
 cloak about him, or urging his fellows 
 " I go a-fishing." But slowly, im- 
 perceptibly, the walls of the world 
 closed in again ; the sun beat pitilessly 
 down ; the heavens were brass, the 
 earth iron. Now and again they 
 would open out at the sight of the 
 sapphire sparkle of the Mediterranean, 
 or the deep, green growth under 
 blossoming orchards of France. The 
 wind became the life-giving breath of 
 the spirit, and the soul would " beat " 
 '5 1
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 against " mortal bars," seeing infinite 
 power, infinite possibility, lying but 
 just beyond the frail partition ; a 
 touch, and he might glide from the 
 mountain side down over the trees 
 that slept in the noonday of the valley ; 
 a hand on the eyes, and they would 
 see to the truth that lies beneath form 
 and colour of earthly things ; a finger 
 on the ear, and he would hear the 
 very meaning of the wind and of 
 the trickle of the stream the gift 
 of tongues would be an imaginably 
 natural incident. 
 
 Yet next day, at some trifling ailment, 
 death and its terrors compass him 
 about, and the man shakes as with 
 ague under the fear of it and shame 
 of cowardice. Or he wakes every 
 152
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 morning seemingly refreshed, only to 
 fall by midday into a gulf of blackness 
 and mistrust, sordid, not tragic, not 
 dignified ; and he sits tongue-tied, 
 seeing a sneer in every smile, marvelling 
 that men do not see the loathsomeness 
 and terror that lie around them, but 
 walk unconcerned among the dangers 
 that encompass. Then again life 
 returns in full flood, and the fears and 
 the terrors are as the fabric of a dream. 
 A long, strange way, full of inexplic- 
 able joys and sorrows, hopes and 
 fears a far longer path to travel in 
 the spirit than that by which he 
 came " out of the iron furnace, even 
 out of Egypt," to the cool airs and 
 sweet quiet of an old English country 
 house in wooded downs touched by 
 '53
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 the freshness of the sea. There in 
 the south, after the first bound towards 
 health, life had stood still ; the parched, 
 sapless land could yield dry, clear air, 
 sharp bright sunlight, but no re- 
 freshment of health and of spirit, 
 nothing that could be compared to 
 the misty mornings, and soft dewy 
 evenings of a mild English spring. 
 There the spring brings no re- 
 freshment ; March reaps her harvest 
 and the palm leaves hang dry and 
 yellowish : here all life was stirring 
 after the winter sleep, and earth was 
 striving in her own finite way to 
 make all things new. It was long 
 since he had seen an English spring, 
 and the eye could not be satisfied 
 with gazing. 
 
 154
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 He first noticed it when, looking 
 on the wintry copses, he saw that a 
 thin ripple of life had run over the 
 ground ; among brown stalks and 
 withered leaves so slight a flush of 
 green that you could hardly say, " It is 
 here " or " It is there," nor surely know 
 the change was worked to the outer 
 eye or noted by the reanimate percep- 
 tion. Then the fine veil of skeleton 
 branches against the sky, through, 
 under, beyond which he could see 
 the blue downs of the coast, thickened, 
 and they warmed in colour ; till the 
 brown of the elm became purple, 
 and the brown of the beeches red, 
 and the willow golden : then the elm 
 burst into its little purple rosettes but 
 the others stayed. And now crept 
 155
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 out those little silvery creatures which 
 the children call palms ; like little 
 downy animals, so sweet, so comfortable 
 that the child must half believe they 
 are alive. Early in April the clumps 
 of crocus in the turf, purple and yellow, 
 were dying, but the daffodils were 
 beginning to take their place, strewing 
 the rough grass with flowers of milky 
 gold. A week later the snake-heads 
 were drawing themselves out of the 
 turf, with head curved downwards 
 like a swan preening its breast ; 
 primroses were waking in the lanes, 
 the larch was hanging " rosy 
 plumelets," the silver leaf buds of 
 the apple were out, and the flower 
 of the peach. 
 
 This was cuckoo day, and punctual
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 to the moment they hooted in the 
 wood below ; they had come in good 
 time for the later nests, for the wagtails 
 had taken their last year's tenement 
 again in the ivied wall, and the 
 untidy sparrows were littering lawn 
 and garden. 
 
 Again a week, and the cherry buds 
 showed fawn coloured ; two days they 
 stayed so, then a little tree burst into 
 flower. Two days more, and the 
 orchard looked as if a snow shower 
 had lightly fallen. At last one windy 
 day white blossoms came drifting down 
 among the scarlet tulips, and after 
 this a rose-tinge passed over the trees, 
 like a faint sunset on the snow, and 
 then the glory was gone. But the 
 expanding spirit could not bewail the 
 '57
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 glory gone, for warmer weather came 
 with sun like summer, so that the 
 plum-tree on the wall burst into flower 
 one morning while one sat under it ; 
 a purple iris appeared, the blackthorn 
 whitened, and in the garden beds the 
 peonies and lilies shot up, anemones 
 dozed half their radiant life away in 
 royal groups, purple and scarlet. The 
 remembrance of trembling and help- 
 lessness fell from the man, and he 
 laughed to see the peacock's grave and 
 measured dance and the fierce cock 
 chaffinch wooing in his bright spring 
 coat. 
 
 So the spring returned, unfolding 
 infinite new delights, sometimes hurry- 
 ing, sometimes delaying ; the copses 
 clothed themselves in foliage as light
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 as a birch grove, with all fine gradations 
 of colour from the grey palms grown 
 old, to the golden oaks beginning, 
 and all life and all activity responded. 
 Though storms and chill might check 
 the budding, the renewal or the spring 
 moved in man and nature, as man and 
 nature shook off the memory of death 
 and winter, warmed and revivified in 
 the waxing power of the sun. 
 
 And the world found voice for its joy, 
 and it was joy to lie awake in the hour 
 before dawn, while the last fine song of 
 the nightingale still lingered in the 
 memory, and hear the untutored song 
 echo from bush to bush ; when the 
 thrush and the blackbird waked, and 
 the starling chattered, and the cock 
 chimed in with the lusty bar of music 
 159
 
 Ihe Court of the King 
 
 of his bugle call, and all in chorus 
 welcomed the day, and ceased. 
 
 And one morning, as the man leaned 
 out of his window to drink the sweet 
 air of growing things, he saw suddenly, 
 that the desire of spring was satiate. 
 The trees had burst their buds and 
 made a glory of golden leaves. Life 
 no longer pulsed, stayed, hurried on, 
 but flowed in the full tide of summer. 
 Summer would burst into glories of 
 beauty and odour on this side and on 
 that, but the fresh impulse of spring 
 was over. And the man leaned out 
 and revelled in it. The rough bank 
 had covered its scars with lush green 
 grass ; and leaves, stems, and branches 
 were hidden. He revelled in the 
 odorous, sun-warmed air, in the pleasant 
 1 60
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 kindly earth with its beauties, in the 
 sight and sound of the happy living 
 things, and he looked away towards 
 the hills, but they were hidden. Then 
 all at once he saw the blindness of 
 content, and he cried out " Oh my soul, 
 where are the heavenly horizons and 
 the distant misty hills ? " 
 
 For while he gazed, the veil had 
 fallen ; at first translucent, radiant ; 
 threads fine as gossamer shining with 
 light, so that they seemed but to 
 illuminate the distance. Then the 
 veil was inwrought with flowers and as 
 each new beauty came, he said " This 
 is God's work, and I can see Him in 
 this ; all this symbolizes the light of 
 His countenance, and I see Him in His 
 world." And of each human interest 
 161 L
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 and activity he said, " This is God's 
 work, for it is the work of His 
 children." So it fell fold on fold, 
 thickening imperceptibly, full of sweet 
 odours as it fell, and the voices of 
 birds ; and he did not know that the 
 focus of his view was contracting, and 
 that he was beginning to look not 
 through the veil but at it. And he 
 did not see that there was another hand 
 at work and other threads in the web, 
 grosser, more earthly, and darker yet ; 
 and that as it was woven, warp and 
 woof, other hands threw the shuttle. 
 So it fell, closing out the heavenly 
 vision, hiding too the clouds and dark- 
 ness round God's seat ; and he found 
 himself gazing on the veil which men 
 call this world. Then with a great 
 162
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 struggle he cried, " In the time of our 
 wealth, good Lord deliver us." 
 
 Ill 
 
 The year came round again, and this 
 man had found no contentment for mind 
 or heart. He was such a one as had 
 always believed in the unity of God 
 and nature, had held the visible 
 universe to be the robe of His glory 
 and the material to be like clothing 
 which partly hides and partly reveals 
 the form. 
 
 He was a man whom God had chas- 
 tened a little in the flesh, so that He 
 might know the Hand that touched 
 him, yet had given him no loathsome 
 163
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 evil thing to be with him, so that he 
 must hate even the body that served 
 him. God had given him amply of the 
 good things of life and sufficiently of 
 its sorrows to make him know the first 
 were good. He had early looked into 
 the empty tomb and seen that since 
 even the body can in time elude it, it 
 would be beyond reason and belief to 
 dream that the soul can be prisoned by 
 it. For the soul is not even prisoned 
 by the body, seeing that it can walk 
 among the stars, thread the secret places 
 of the earth, or dive into the seas, while 
 the eyes of the body stare upon a book ; 
 or it can fight battles and go through 
 many strange adventures and visit distant 
 lands while the eyes are closed and the 
 body is laid upon the bed. Therefore 
 164
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 this man had long believed in his soul, 
 though he had not taught his life and 
 his fancies that though the material 
 sometimes appears to be greater and 
 stronger and older than the spiritual, 
 yet that this is merely as the flower 
 seems to one who looks not below the 
 ground to be more vital than the root. 
 So though he believed this, the man 
 could not understand what the truth of 
 the world might be. For he saw that 
 although one may rejoice in its beauties 
 and delight even in wholly innocent 
 things, believing truly that they come 
 from God, yet many men thus go 
 astray. And when he listened to the 
 voices of the dearest of God's servants 
 he became all the more perplexed. 
 For one cried " All things are yours,
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 things present as well as things to come "; 
 but another said " Love not the world." 
 Again he heard one say " It is good to 
 be here ; let us build three tabernacles " ; 
 and saw him that said it straightway 
 led into the dust and turmoil of the 
 incredulous crowd. And the sweetest 
 voice said now " Deny yourself," and 
 now " Consider the lilies, consider the 
 birds." 
 
 This man was a man who always loved 
 the water. It made a great calm in his 
 mind to see the sea spread calm before 
 his feet ; the storm of the sea filled him 
 with life, and to die in the sea would, 
 he thought, be like a child sinking to 
 sleep in its mother's arms. Clear, 
 translucent water drew him with a 
 great longing, and he dreamt often 
 166
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 that he should bathe, but as his 
 feet touched the water it ebbed 
 away. 
 
 Now near his home there spread, 
 embowered in trees, a great lake ; on 
 one side ran a road neglected and 
 seldom used, from this the lake ran up 
 curving out of sight. Half-way up 
 towards the curve there stood a great 
 oak, and beneath this he often bathed. 
 So being in this perplexity he went out 
 one summer morning, passed through 
 the sleeping village and by the church, 
 and went down to the lake. 
 
 And in the turn of the year again 
 the woods were lightly foliaged, and 
 the branches shone golden between the 
 leaves ; the ground beneath the oak 
 was carpeted with hyacinths and prim- 
 167
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 roses, here and there a late anemone 
 starred it. 
 
 Here he undressed and plunged from 
 a little height into a pool. His hands 
 parted the water, which rushed up him 
 as he plunged ; then he gave himself 
 up to the element and it lifted him to the 
 surface. Again he warred with it, yet 
 moved by means of it, with steady stroke 
 parting it, and again he turned over and 
 yielded himself up to it, and the least 
 movement was enough to keep him 
 floating on the surface, and he rejoiced 
 in the coolness and the purity. So 
 when he had finished he returned and 
 clothed himself, and moved on through 
 the edge of the wood, looking at the 
 water, wondering at a transparency that 
 was so deep and the strength of the 
 168
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 fleeting thing, till he came to where a 
 little wooden bridge spanned the over- 
 flow from the lake ; and upon the 
 bridge a boy of about eight years old 
 was sitting. 
 
 He was not dressed like a village 
 child ; his cap lay beside him with a 
 little spray of reddening oak stuck 
 into it, and he was staring at the 
 water. 
 
 " Who are you, my son ? " said the 
 man as he passed. 
 
 " I'm a king," the child replied ; 
 " but I'm an outlaw just now, you 
 see," he went on, laying his hand 
 on his cap. " I can't get into my 
 kingdom." 
 
 " Where is your kingdom ? " asked 
 the man. 
 
 169
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 " Come down here and you'll see," 
 he said. 
 
 The man sat down beside him on the 
 plank. 
 
 " I can't see much," he said, " the 
 water is dazzling." 
 
 " Ah, those are the sun's messengers," 
 said the boy ; " the sun sends messengers 
 millions and millions of miles to the 
 lake and they telegraph back to him. 
 But you must look in another place." 
 
 The man slipped into the humour of 
 the child. 
 
 " Now I see your kingdom," he 
 said ; " it has greenish forests waving, 
 strange transparent creatures move 
 silently about." 
 
 " No, that's not my kingdom," the 
 child answered, "why, I can get in 
 170
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 there ; but it is not like what you think. 
 Those are slippery fishes and the 
 bottom is all slimy. You must fix 
 your eyes tight and not let them slip to 
 see my kingdom." 
 
 " Now I see it," said the other ; " it 
 has beautiful blue sky, trees stretch 
 twigs into it which glisten like gold 
 one spreads leaves like jewelled glass 
 with the sun shining through ; one 
 stretches budding twigs made of ruby ; 
 it is far, far below the shine and the 
 fishes ; and yet when I look it is quite 
 close to us." 
 
 " Yes, that's my kingdom ! " cried the 
 child. 
 
 " But isn't it just like that behind 
 us ? " said the man, to test him. 
 
 The boy looked round. " No, that's
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 out-of-doors," he said. " My kingdom 
 is much more happy and safe, and the 
 sky is more shining and the leaves 
 glitter." 
 
 " But it's the sun's kingdom down 
 there even where the shine is," said the 
 man. 
 
 " Yes, I know it's his," said the boy ; 
 " if he didn't send messengers down 
 there it would be all inky black and 
 dreadful ; but they won't let his mes- 
 sengers get through, only a few of 
 them, a little yellowish, greenish light." 
 
 " Is out-of-doors his kingdom too ? " 
 then said the man. 
 
 " Of course it's his," said the child ; 
 " if he wasn't there it would be dark, 
 and the wind would sob and the trees 
 shake their branches." 
 172
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 " And what about your kingdom ? " 
 
 " Oh, he makes that for me," said 
 the child, " to be all my own." 
 
 The man sat a moment looking at 
 the water and was silent ; a starling 
 chattered on the boughs above ; far 
 away came the cry of the cuckoo ; at 
 the right hand of them there was a little 
 rustle as a snake slipped over dead leaves 
 and through the new living shoots of 
 spring, and paused. 
 
 The man turned to the child. 
 
 " But is it real ? " he said. 
 
 " It's just as real as the sun and the 
 water and out-of-doors," said the boy 
 steadily. 
 
 " But you said some day you would 
 get in," answered the man, tempting 
 him. 
 
 173
 
 The Court of the King 
 
 The boy turned and looked at him, 
 and his eyes were like a great stream 
 with the sun shining through. " And 
 that's just as real as me," he 
 said. 
 
 The man snapped the twig he held 
 in his hand, the snake silently slipped 
 through the brake and was gone, and 
 the man stood up, yet paused a moment 
 looking down at the shining world, 
 then he got up. 
 
 " Goodbye," he said, " I must go 
 and look for my kingdom. I had one 
 once but I lost it." 
 
 " Shall you be able to get in ? " asked 
 the boy. 
 
 " Not just yet, perhaps," he said, 
 " but I can look at it till I find the way 
 in."
 
 From the Bank of the River 
 
 So he went back through the wood, 
 remembering that it was written, 
 " Out of the mouth of babes thou hast 
 perfected praise."
 
 Ube Ovcsbam press, 
 
 CNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, 
 WOKING AND LONDON.
 
 44SOQ 
 
 CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 MAR 2 2 1985 
 APR 081985
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000670415 9