Now the people of the village opposite used to speak of goin_The Court of the King, and Other Studies

THE COURT OF THE KING

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

THE SOUL OF A CAT.

THE VENTURE OF RATIONAL FAITH.

CAPITAL LABOUR AND TRADE AND THE OUTLOOK.

SUBJECT TO VANITY.

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

THE COURT OF

THE KING

AND OTHER STUDIES

_By_ MARGARET BENSON

T. FISHER UNWIN

LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20

_First published, 1913_

(_All rights reserved_)

PREFACE

“We wake with wrists and ankles jewelled still.”

There are many ways of entering fairyland; sometimes there is a door in

the ground, and he who goes through finds himself in some great hall

or carved and painted chamber. Sometimes we find the morning dew on a

flower and touch the eyes with it; or, like John Dietrich, catch the

cap which the fairies are flinging and put it on our own heads: and

immediately the little people spring into sight, we hear the sweetness

of their music and see the glitter of their hidden treasure and watch

the merriness of their games.

The difficulty of the first method is to find the way, of the second to

find the will; and John Dietrich’s way is the venture of confidence.

Children are continually in fairyland; grubbing in mother earth they

find the door; as they tumble on the grass the morning dew touches

their eyes and makes them pure.

But sometimes the light of fairyland will shine suddenly about you;

and you know it is no common glow though it seems but the light of day

to many. So a child sauntering and playing at midday in the fields

may throw back its head and look into a deep blue summer sky, and be

seized on a sudden by a beauty which troubles the spirit, a greatness

which weighs upon the soul and wearies it, till the will fails. Or the

light may shine softer at evening through the nursery window, when

roofs of houses and branches of elder purple and darken against a sky

all purest primrose, and draw the young spirit with a half-comprehended

longing. Sometimes it comes with raptures of sunlight in a green

garden; sometimes cold and strange in moonlight when existence holds

its breath, and earth is lost in shadow or refined to vapour in

uncertain light; sometimes with a fullness of peace in pale emerald of

evening light jewelling the latticed windows of an old house, till

the enchantment thickens and the spirit pants with the presage of the

moment, waiting for a revelation which still delays.

And sometimes it is filled with the very spirit of the little people:

curious, amused, fantastic--as when you walk on a sea-shore, and

suddenly, as with the touch of a charm, the pool at your feet becomes

a little inland sea: you see the rocky shores sloping down, the sandy

bottom, the submarine promontories through the blue: forests of seaweed

sway; a terrible creature with claws crawls out through pale coralline;

a lump of red jelly stretches out its arms and becomes now a living,

crimson flower, now a horrid polypus ravaging, irresistible; a fairy

being mailed in translucent armour floats on with antennæ fiercely

waving; and you are back in fairyland.

Many times you may borrow the Red Cap to watch the boy Stevenson

titanically carve mountains and seas in a mere mess of porridge; or to

hear with Charles Kingsley when the grouse prophesies doom on the moor

or the empty gnat boasts himself beside the stream. But sweetest of all

it is to win for yourself the charm which opens your eyes in wood or

field, and to hear with awakened ear the voices of created things.

These things should be at our command; but the things which children

know we must re-learn; and there is no truth more evident to the child

nor 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 by moonlight to the Court of the

King; showed us through sordid circumstance the silent romance on the

golden hill, as she had showed us romantic incidents, even in the

Desert City; then she surrendered us to the guardianship of her child

Imagination who, through the voices of others, brought back for us the

Oriental vision of the royal boat in the mysterious midnight solemnity.

And from this our older guardian led us back, and blotting out for

us sight and sound of a populous city by a transparent veil, made us

understand how to trust the mightiness of the life of which we were

part.

Then she bade us close the book with the touch of pain and healing sent

to quicken into life, and again Imagination sent us, among the scenes

of daily life to look for the beautiful kingdom which endures: And we

must say it in what form we may, so that we catch the meaning of the

simple word, so early and so often said, from which our stubborn sense

rebels, “the prison is the world of sight.”

Thus before memory should fade too much I wrote down some of the things

I had under guidance witnessed and experienced, and those which the

child Imagination had, as I say, taught in divers ways.

For too often we let memory lie like a rabbit in a winter burrow; and

imagination buzzes on the surface of things like a fly on a pane: we

narrow our vision to our purpose and our hearing 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

THE GATES OF GOLD 17

THE LAKE WITHIN THE WORLD 27

III

A DESERT CITY 37

THE OTHER SIDE 53

THE SILENT ROMANCE 73

THE COURT OF THE KING 85

VII

THE GOLDEN DAHABEAH 101

VIII

THE UNSEEN WORLD 125

FROM THE BANK OF THE RIVER 135

THE GATES OF GOLD

The favourite game with Noah’s Ark was to make the nursery table

an Island of Delight. The Delight must have centred in the

looking-glasses, which, with frames discreetly hidden in moss, mirrored

in their unruffled surfaces forms of numerous ducks and geese and other

less decided species of birds. Certainly the other furnishings of the

Island were not particularly delightful, for it was thickly populated

with wild beasts of horrid aspect and defective limbs, and specimens of

that strange pinkish animal of which Noah is so fond, and which may be

classified with equal probability as a Dingo or a Wild Boar.

My earliest ideas of an Oasis were combined of this Island of Delight

and of the description of Elim. The Oasis would be round as the nursery

table; it would be covered with lush green grass like a water-meadow.

It would have about seventy palm-trees standing at fairly regular

intervals, and between the palm-trees there would be (instead of the

looking-glasses) bubbling springs of water crystal-clear.

When at last I saw an Oasis it was unlike my vision--my Vision of

Delight. There was no grass, but there were more palm-trees; there were

no crystal fountains, but trickles of brown water in sandy channels.

It came up to my ideal in one point only--there was none of that

indefiniteness of outline which is so repulsive to the simple mind.

Even as you can stand on the bridge above Mentone, and see a milestone

with France on one side and a milestone with Italy on the other, so

here you could take your stand and say “That on my right hand is

Desert, and that on my left is Oasis.”

We had been travelling all day over the sandy, dusty plains of North

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

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.

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 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

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 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 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 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 in,” and he pointed as he spoke to a crack in the side

of the bank, just such a rent as a great tree makes when it falls,

tearing its roots out of the ground. “Into that,” he said, “you must

go.”

So we went towards it in faith, and found when we got there a man could

easily pass in. As we descended into the hot twilight inside the ground

a bat flew out. We went down-hill until the guide stopped us, where

there seemed to lie at our feet a little blue dust over the stones,

for this was the still blue water of a lake that stretched away into

deep and deeper darkness. As we stood we heard out of the darkness the

splash of oars, a light shone on the water, and round the sheer wall

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 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.”

A DESERT CITY

III

A DESERT CITY

“He seems as one whose footsteps halt

Toiling in immeasurable sand

And o’er a weary sultry land

Sown in a wrinkle 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

mushroom growth of a wonder-working Health Resort. It possesses several

hotels, an “Establishment,” a golf links, and everything which a

really 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.

We responded to the appeal, and went to stay in a hotel of large

corridors and wide balconies which looked out upon the fifteen

pyramids. Opposite was a small, bare house called Villa Mon Bijou. The

town was planted on a desert so flat that it seemed a German toy town

set upon a table; only there were no trees with curly green foliage

to be seen, because no one might plant a living thing unless by order

from Government.[2] Neat little pavements with new little gas lamps

traversed it rectangularly, and came every way to an abrupt stop in

heavy desert sand. There was a tiny English church, in which the few

English Christians staying in the place assembled. Little flat-roofed

villas like coloured cardboard boxes stood back from the pavement with

strange ornaments above the gate; here a stone eagle with knees turned

outwards, there a stuffed fox. Backwards and forwards we went under

noontide sun to the baths, and were told to rest in the Khedive’s

sitting-room, upholstered with yellow satin.

One would have thought that nothing so brand-new could have been found

in sight of the pyramid of Unas and the cemetery of Sakkara. Even death

seemed glaringly recent. One day we drove in the desert and searched

the horizon for objects of interest. “What is that?” we said, pointing

to a small building on the outskirts of the town. “That,” replied Saïd

with pride, “is the new slaughter-house.” “And this enclosure?” “The

English cemetery.” “And that yonder?” “The Italian mortuary.” “What is

that which looks like a village on the hill?” “That is the Mahommedan

burying-place.” “And that beyond?” “Another graveyard.” Then he drove

us through a valley of Hinnom, where we marked, among other things, a

dead camel and a dead calf; and as we passed between the windmill and

the ill-smelling stream we saw three coffins lie, brand-new, unguarded

and alone.

But towards evening a certain magic fell upon the place. We had gone

one day towards the single palm-tree in the desert. Miles and miles of

sand and air, unstirred by any slightest sound, seemed to lie between

us and that solitary tree, and when we reached it nothing could be seen

but the slot of beasts around it.

Then as we turned the light began to change. Behind the fifteen

pyramids the sky glowed scarlet till it tinged the water of the

Nile with blood. Far up in the blue hung an ethereal arc of crimson

light; the heaven deepened to indigo where it met night; kindled

into indescribable sapphire where it touched the dying day; the

conflagration grew till at last earth glowed its answer to the sky with

a purple flood rising and deluging sand-hills and valley.

As we neared the toy town with its twinkling lights the glow had died

away, and there gloomed before us dimly a knoll round which knelt the

camels of the Bedawîn; the figures which moved beside them with dark,

fine profile and the white cloths round their heads seemed like Magi

come to greet the Royal Child.

Again we went up the hills which, like a low rampart, bordered the

plain to the east. At the foot they were carved into quarries of a

stone so white that it seemed like wedges cut in a great cream cheese.

The hills were barren, but for a few straggling plants and grasses

about; like a raised map or the skeleton of the world. Yet as we went

on we still found always in front, like the marks on the carriage

drive, a curving, trodden road, winding up vanishing out of sight.

While we stood looking at the loneliness there came daintily stepping,

with embroidered shoes and black silk mantles round them, a party of

women to meet us; in front a man carried a child. I cannot but think

that they vanished into thin air when they had passed us.

Or again one might descend towards the river, on the road between the

fields. There as the sky lights its fires towards evening the men would

leave their work and stand with dripping feet on their coarse outer

garment by the water’s edge to say the evening prayer. Near the town

stood a sycamore, under which, on a raised platform, some men prayed

loud and lustily five times a day. “God likit them very much,” said the

donkey-boy; but with cynical estimation of the importance of this fact

he added, “If I bray, where is my business?”

A brougham on the road as we returned: Europe is at one side. But

within sat a woman golden haired, with her veil pushed back and a

cigarette between her teeth. That one passing, demure and dignified,

with an attendant wrinkled and stately, is a Princess walking for

her health. Here two in a victoria, with transparent veils and Paris

bonnets, show Turkish emancipation; and the shut and blinded brougham

with a Sudanese on the box gives sign of Arab propriety.

And now as the town is reached we begin to see the meaning of this

modern city; those high walls are not merely meant to hide a garden

of flowers, nor does the lattice serve only to keep the sunlight from

fading Eastern fabrics. But behind the pierced work of that window

peers some Scheherazade at her story-weaving, wondering what life

means, “half sick of shadows.” There is the Pasha’s house, and the

whisper goes that these are slaves.

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 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 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 freeing 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 entertain the Pasha with

the honours of a burgess.

Who wakes? who dreams? Surely the Western eye sees clear, which 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

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 backwards

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 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 looking-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 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 different kind of life, the giant images of 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 opposite 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 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

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 doorway of stone facing

sometimes a great 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 mountain 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 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.[3]

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 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 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 demand,

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 chattering 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 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

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 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, 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 recrossed, 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 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 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 garlanded who died

three thousand years before that Queen was born.

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 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 highway 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.

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

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 straightway threw the wand which was

in her hand with unerring aim, and the 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 Bukdadi’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 advantages 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 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 harîm, 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 whenever 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

Saïda, with her round face and dark eyes and blue-patterned little

chin, is married, though she still prefers to live with her father

and be an occasional visitor at her husband’s house. And what there

is of demureness in Saïda 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 teeth as he

lisps his greeting--Achmet, whether cantering about 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 without 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 bakshîsh 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.

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

“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

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 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 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 limestone 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 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 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 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 of 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 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,

dispersing into the night; the strange, desolate valley winding through

all apparent barriers into the heart of the hills seemed like a dream.

Surprise 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 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 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 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 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 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 penetrated into the tomb in

the absence of the guard, and the body of Amenhetep II. no longer

rests in his Eternal Habitation.]

THE GOLDEN DAHABEAH

VII

THE GOLDEN DAHABEAH