The Court of the King, and Other Studies

by Margaret Benson

This was cuckoo day, and punctual 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 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 helplessness 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 hurrying, sometimes delaying; the copses clothed themselves in foliage as light 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 of 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 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 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 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 darkness round God’s seat; and he found himself gazing on the veil which men call this world. Then with a great struggle he cried, “In the time of our wealth, good Lord deliver us.”

III

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 chastened a little in the flesh, so that He might know the Hand that touched him, yet had given him no loathsome 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 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, 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.”