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 jewelledstill.”
There are many ways of entering fairyland;sometimes there is a door in theground, and he who goes through findshimself in some great hall or carvedand painted chamber. Sometimes wefind the morning dew on a flowerand touch the eyes with it; or, likeJohn Dietrich, catch the cap whichthe fairies are flinging and put it on ourown heads: and immediately the littlepeople spring into sight, we hear the[6]sweetness of their music and see theglitter of their hidden treasure andwatch the merriness of their games.
The difficulty of the first method isto find the way, of the second to findthe will; and John Dietrich’s way isthe venture of confidence.
Children are continually in fairyland;grubbing in mother earth theyfind the door; as they tumble on thegrass the morning dew touches theireyes and makes them pure.
But sometimes the light of fairylandwill shine suddenly about you; andyou know it is no common glowthough it seems but the light of dayto many. So a child sauntering andplaying at midday in the fields maythrow back its head and look into a[7]deep blue summer sky, and be seizedon a sudden by a beauty which troublesthe spirit, a greatness which weighsupon the soul and wearies it, till thewill fails. Or the light may shinesofter at evening through the nurserywindow, when roofs of houses andbranches of elder purple and darkenagainst a sky all purest primrose, anddraw the young spirit with a half-comprehendedlonging. Sometimes itcomes with raptures of sunlight in agreen garden; sometimes cold andstrange in moonlight when existenceholds its breath, and earth is lost inshadow or refined to vapour in uncertainlight; sometimes with a fullnessof peace in pale emerald of eveninglight jewelling the latticed windows[8]of an old house, till the enchantmentthickens and the spirit pants with thepresage of the moment, waiting fora revelation which still delays.
And sometimes it is filled with thevery spirit of the little people: curious,amused, fantastic—as when you walkon a sea-shore, and suddenly, as withthe touch of a charm, the pool atyour feet becomes a little inland sea:you see the rocky shores sloping down,the sandy bottom, the submarine promontoriesthrough the blue: forests ofseaweed sway; a terrible creature withclaws crawls out through pale coralline;a lump of r