Changeling, and Other Stories
destroy it.... Remember!"
"Oh!"
"What is it, dearest? What is wrong? Have I done anything to offend
you, to hurt you?"
"Remember Samson, judge of Israel, and how he loved a woman in the
valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah, and he told her all his heart.
"And remember his end, how the Lord was departed from him, and the
Philistines took him and put out his eyes--"
"O-o-o-o-h!"
"--and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass--"
"A-a-a-a-h!"
"Solomon, dearest Solomon, why do you cry?"
"--and he did grind in the prison house ... and make them sport...."
With a loud cry the young king burst from the room and fled down the
corridors, his, feet pattering like the feet of foxes on the run, his
heart crying out in sudden terror. "Where are you going, Solomon?
Where are you gone?" came the voice of the young queen. "O head of
most fine gold, O eyes of doves, O cheeks as a bed of spices, whither
are you gone? O lips like lilies, O hands as gold rings, why do you
leave me?" So all night long she cried, and wandered aimlessly. "You
called me your sister, your spouse, your love, your dove, your
undefiled," she wept piteously, "and now you are gone." She went
through the garden, while Nathan crouched in the undergrowth. "You
were like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with
all the powders of the merchant, and now you are gone." She wandered
through the dark streets. "O locks that are curly and black as a
raven, where are you now?" And the dawn broke and the shadows fled
away, and still she cried: "O Solomon, where are you, Solomon? Make
haste, my beloved!" But he never came. "Saw ye him whom my soul
loveth?" she asked the watchman. But they drove her away. "O ye
daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, tell him, that I am sick
of love..." But he never came.
VII
Without, there were the grunts of her men as they strapped the packs of
the elephants, the snarl of camels as they rose to their pads and
turned to bite at their loads, the shuffle of the troops as they lined
for the long night march, the quick gruff orders of the captains, the
canter of horses. Within, Sheba stood very erect in the great hall.
The poor white king writhed on his throne. Nathan stood by his side,
erect and afraid.
"And I said--" Sheba's voice was quiet--"oh, you who were as my
brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find you
without, I would kiss you, I would not be despised.
"For I thought I was set as a seal upon your arm, and that your love
was as strong as death.
"I rose and went about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I
sought you, whom I thought my soul loved, but I found you not.
"The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they
wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veils from me--
"Me, Sheba!" Her eyes flashed. Solomon quailed in his seat. The
prophet made a propitiatory gesture.
"Oh, do not fear, Nathan." Sheba smiled. "I came not to conquer, but
to find wisdom. I found it."
She paused an instant.
"Before I go, let me give you, Solomon, called the wise, some wisdom of
the heart. And you, Nathan the prophet, let me prophesy. You might
have had one woman, Solomon, to love you all your life, but the day
will come when you will seek my face among a thousand women, and never
have me. You might have a temple that would have made the pyramids
seem like outhouses, but one day your temple will be a little broken
wall. And your people might have been the conquerors of Africa, but
one day they will be helots in the Babylonian land. You have the
wisdom of the shrewd and pious, Solomon, that can never meet the
generous hand with the grateful heart."
She turned and swept out of the hall. At the gates she stopped and
bowed mockingly.
"O King, live forever!"
VIII
All afternoon the east wind had been blowing, cold, bitter as aloes,
and a great cloud-bank raced after the sun westward, until only a
little space in the western horizon was clear where the sun went down.
The voices of the land were stilled, the minute thunder of the pigeons,
the whirring of crickets. Nor had the leaves of the trees their lively
murmur, but stood fast and flat, like set sails. One could hardly
believe that the winter was past and summer coming, for all was dreary,
dreary....
Against the great red mushroom of the setting sun, the last of the
homing caravan of Sheba showed. In the mind's eyes of the young king
and the old prophet as they stood by the unbeauty of stone and brick
and gray mortar that was the unfinished temple, they could see the
angry camels, the lumbering elephants, the dancing horses, the swinging
men, and the brown comeliness of the young queen's handmaidens, the
straight backs of her fighting men. And the wind from the east blew
through the land, blew through the heart of Solomon.... In a minute
now they would disappear over the desert's edge. All seemed somehow
tragical, like sailors leaving a great stricken ship, or glory passing
from the land of its abiding....
"Oh, Nathan," pleaded the young king, "tell me she lied. Tell me I
shall not have a thousand women and be a bitter, loose old man."
"O King, you shall find a virtuous woman. And her price will be far
above rubies."
"Will she be as kind as Sheba was?"
"She will arise while it is yet night, and give meat to her household,
and a portion to her maidens.... She will consider a field and buy it:
with the fruit of her hands she will plant a vineyard."
"Will she be as well-favored, as beautiful as--as Sheba was?"
"Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the
Lord, she shall be praised."
"I suppose so. I suppose--you are right, Nathan, but--" The last of
the caravan disappeared over the edge of the desert, and as though it
were accompanying them, being a friend to them, the sun disappeared,
too. A great coldness and darkness and dreariness came over the land,
so that Solomon looked up in surprise. There was no moon....
THE PARLIAMENT AT THEBES
All around us, now, is the occult night of Egypt, and we sense that we
are in a place we have known in dreams and desires, and perhaps seen a
drawing of in some childhood's book. Before us we sense--we do not
see, so little light does the moon behind the rolling clouds give
us--an immensity of sand. In some places there are little hills; and
in others billows as of the sea, and here a rude terrace, and there a
minute cliff. Everywhere is the sand; live sand, not dead. And
westward, we know, it rolls onward like the sea, through the width of
Africa, through the Sahara, reaches Timbuktu, the secret city, and the
jungle takes up the land, and rolls to the Gold Coast, where the
Atlantic booms in great, curling surf.
And south of us is Africa, too, the crags of Abyssinia, the great belt
of Rhodesia, and the plains where Kaffirs dig for diamonds, and the
great veldts the Boers have tamed, and Table Mountain, that old
navigators know, and the cape they have called Good Hope. And
southward and eastward is the pearly haze of Madagascar.
And north of us the desert slopes away to where Alexandria was, to
where the still Mediterranean is, which has no tides, and Tyre and
Sidon flourished, that now are dead; and Carthage of the Phoenicians
was, whence black Hannibal set forth against the eagles of Rome--and
was conquered and yet lives, so great his name is. And here was the
empire of the Moors, the slim bronze people who struck Spain in a great
shattering wave, and from whom Charlemagne got glory in battle.
All these are dead now, and the moon shines over dead cities, dead
heroes, and great empires that are dead, and buried under shifting
silver sands. But the land we are in is not dead; eternal Africa,
eternal Egypt.
And where we are now, it is old, the events of history being like the
trivialities of a summer day. We sense that Egypt is older than
Mohammed, whose revelation is law there now, and older than the Little
Lord who fled hither from Palestine with Joseph and Mary, older than
the painted kings who sleep in pyramids; older than the pyramids
themselves; older than the Hebrews who helped build them; older than
Moses, who revolted and used black magic against the Pharaoh of his
time; older than the tradition of yellow shaven priests; older than
Isis and Osiris whom they worshiped with polished ritual--older, and
younger, than this; eternal.
Above our heads now there is an occasional beam of the moon, and in
front of us the plain of sand that extends to the little hillocks and
minute cliffs the wind has made. And back of us is the broad and
shallow Nile, where we hear an occasional lap of a little wave, and a
splash as of some small fish jumping. And here and there are isolated
palm-trees.
And there are no men, anywhere, but there is a sense of men. We know
there are men in the cities to the north of us, men and women dancing
in great blazing hotels, men on great liners going eastward through the
canal De Lesseps made, men south of us at camp fires in the jungle, men
west of us on caravans to Timbuktu. But here, and near here, men there
are none.
There is a pocket of clearness in the clouds for a second and the moon
shines through, and we see on the plain before us such assembly of life
as only Noah saw when he took the creatures of the world in seven by
seven and two by two, on board his great ship. In a great orderly
gathering they are there, patient, silent. The bears are there, the
brown bear, and the little black bear. And the moorland ponies, and
the deer are there, great elks with horns like sails, and the little
deer of parks, and they of the cat tribe, with sleek furs and green
eyes, and the fox with his brush, and the lanky, wide-eyed hare, and
the rabbit children do be loving. They are all gathered there.
And the kine of the field are there, patient, stupid-looking. And the
great monster of the river, the hippopotamus, and the armored creature
that has the horn on its nose. And the last of the buffaloes. And the
great springing thing of Australia that carries its young in a pouch,
it is there. And the solemn sheep.
And back of that is an infinity of little creatures, the furry little
creatures of the woods, who run when approached. They are there. All,
all are silent, patient, a little puzzled, one fancies.
In front of this gathering, forward and a little apart, is a manner of
deputation. The lion, who pads around a little, and in whose eyes
there is anger. The great black and amber tiger, who is still but for
the significant movement of the immense tail, and the elephant, that
seems like some gigantic carven thing. And the crocodile lies in the
sand, like some black sea-beaten log. And the polar bear is there with
black dots for eyes. And the horse is still as in a stall. And next
to the elephant the dog sits.
And they are all there, gathered for some occult reason, in the night
of Egypt, under the thin twilight of the clouded moon.
And another beam of moonlight comes, and we see that the Angel of the
Lord has appeared somewhence and stands before them.
As we see the Angel of the Lord, one of the illusions of our childhood
vanishes. He is not a shining figure armed with terror and majesty.
True, he has wings and a sword and a white robe, and is of stature
above mortal. But, on the other hand, he has a great red beard, and
his fingers are gnarled. There is something shy in his appearance, and
kindly. And about him there is something of disappointment. One gets
the impression that once he was a very great angel indeed, but in
latter centuries he has drifted into a sort of back-water.