Kophetua the Thirteenth

by Julian Stafford Corbett

"Nay, hear me," continued the hermit. "There are worse sins than cowardice; and those are they which men commit in the life I led. For, mark me, however thou shalt ponder and prune and assay, yet every law thou shalt make to uproot an abuse shall sow the seed of twenty more. What law was ever proclaimed that did not bring evil in its train? I saw my choicest measures, that had cost me all the wisdom and strength that was in me, imperfect, always imperfect. As I passed by the ruins of the evil I had smitten, lo! I saw on all hands new crimes for men to commit. Look forward, I tell thee, as far as thou wilt, and look again and again in thy diligence to foresee the results for good or evil of what thou art about to do; strain thine eyes each time further into the unborn time, till men shall wonder at thy foresight; yet never, never shalt thou see the end. Even close in front of where thy vision reached at furthest may slumber an evil tenfold more pestilent than that thou wouldst destroy, and the forces thou hast started shall waken it at last. If man will meddle with God's work, evil will come in the end. If he shall try to drive the chariot of the sun, he will only scorch the earth. God planted His laws in the beginning of the world that they might grow in His strength. It is only because men, in the vanity of their false wisdom, have cut and pruned and forced them to unnatural growth that there is evil in the world. Leave them alone, I say, and sin not."

"Nay, rather," cried Kophetua, "leave them and sin perforce. For how shall a man find the path of virtue if he cease to try and better his neighbours' lot."

"God has shown us the way," exclaimed the abbot, as one inspired; "join us, and thou shalt see it too. To this end woman was given to man, and man to woman. Take thou a woman to thyself, and find in her food to feed thy yearning. Take one soul, and live for it. To desire more is but vanity and ambition. Men will think themselves so great that one is not enough for their devotion; but God meant otherwise. Man and woman He made to be together, one perfect being. To cement this unity He gave us the noble yearning of unselfishness, which has gone so wide astray. In their pride men let it dissipate itself in ambitious philanthropy. Love for the race is a dream. It is love of man and wife that is the only truth."

Kophetua could not but be moved by the man's earnestness, so strangely unhinged as he was by his surroundings and his troubles. The evils that the old knight's grandest fancy had bred came vividly before him. Did this hermit give the key of the mystery why his own life had been as great a failure as the beggar-guild? The hermit's solution of the great problem was easy; and sweet as it was easy.

"But I have no wife," objected the King, as he felt himself yielding.

"Ay, but there is one within thy reach," said the abbot. "Take her whom thou broughtest hither last night."

"But there is none to wed us here," answered Kophetua, still seeking an escape from the influence around him; "we will depart, and come again as man and wife."

"There is no need," said the hermit. "It is not ceremonies that unite two half-souls into one. Stay here the period of probation. Consecrate thy life to her; sacrifice thine every hour to her greater comfort; offer to her thine every thought and every action till the months of thy noviciate be expired. By such ennobling service shalt thou find thyself more truly wed to her than by the grandest and most solemn rites that ever priests devised. Why, thou knowest it is true! Didst thou not feel it last night, when thou couldst not deny she was thy wife?"

Then the King could answer nothing; he wandered away without a word, and talked with other hermits. All had the same doctrine to preach, and each time its truth sank deeper into Kophetua's heart. Day after day went by, and still he did not depart. All day long the King and the beggar-maid wandered by the side of the busy river like lovers, and never were parted, save when the night fell and the abbess came to call Penelophon to the cell beside her own, or when Kophetua climbed up into the hanging woods to trap a deer and snare her a bird.

Hours they spent fishing, and took but little; for the King had no eye for his float, let it bob how it would. The most part of the time he would lie upon the flowery meadow, gazing like one bewitched at that for which he lived; and that was Penelophon, sitting before him and wreathing flowers and singing a low song, that mingled harmoniously with the happy hum of the little lives of which the air was full. Ever and again she ceased, and the King crept to her to put his arm about her lovingly, and gently kiss the delicate face, as though he sipped honey from a flower. Between each kiss she looked at him, still in shy wonder, not able to believe such happiness was real. So they would sit a little space, till the King was minded of his fishing, and rose to cast his line anew. That business done, he stretched himself upon the grass again to watch his float, and never watched it. For the maid began another garland and another song, as one that dreamed, and the King must feed his eyes again till his lips grew envious once more.