Changeling, and Other Stories
Herself, a tall woman, had to look up like a child to him, and herself,
no small woman, felt a reed beside that vast muscular bulk. She had
two impressions of him, his immense masculine quality, and his
tremendously arrogant manner. For everything Philistine he seemed to
hold a tremendous contempt. He had beaten the Philistines, and
physically he thought little enough of them.
It seemed a little flaunting to her, at first, that great cape of red
hair, of which he was so very proud, so very careful. In a smaller man
it would have been effeminate, but in him it was a trait of virility,
like a lion's mane. Beside him his followers, his clansmen, seemed so
frail, so puny. No wonder they watched him with those adoring eyes.
No wonder they exhibited him, so proud they were.
To Delilah, it was a wonder and an irritation that she should be so
moved, so thrown off her axis mentally and emotionally by the presence
of this great hairy man. All her senses were jangled suddenly. One
part of her, the Philistine lady, smiled in a little patronizing
contempt for the unconcealed boastfulness of his words, for his
insulting glance at the passers-by.
But another, a strange Delilah clamored:
"No matter what he says, let him speak on. My heart opens at his
voice.... Let him contemn all men with his arrogant eye, but let him
not contemn me!"
The Philistine lady had a little disgust for the way he laid his hand
on the heads and the shoulders of his followers, pawing them clumsily.
But the new Delilah clamored:
"If he lays his hand on me, I shall faint to the ground and die!" And
a burning shame rose in her, and her face reddened. And she said to
herself, "God! God! I have suddenly gone mad!"
All her culture, her tradition, all the fine conventions of her life,
seemed suddenly to vanish, become nothing, before this immense male.
All the men of her life, friends, her young false lover, relatives
seemed like puppets beside him--their shaven faces, their polished
speech, their carefulness of dress and demeanor. The rufous giant had
appeared, and "Away," he seemed to have cried, and they had whirled
off, like blown feathers.
If she were troubled, he was troubled too. The directness of him read
her perturbation. A great desire rose in the turbulent hillsman to be
near her, to know her body and soul. He was accustomed to women, to
love women, but never had he known a woman such as this--a beautiful
groomed lady who possessed all that was a wonder to him, riches and
foreign breeding and a strange, sweet culture. His wife of Timneth had
been only a country girl, and his sweethearts of the hills had been
tribeswomen, agile, angry as cats, like some hard, harsh fruit, and the
women he had known in Gaza were venal women, for every man. But this
was a great lady--and she loved him. A great pride, and a great
wonder, and desire rose in him. He was stupefied as she.
They looked at each other, each reading the other's thought, until
their throats became dry, and all words were just trivial sounds,
meaning nothing. Dumb and wondrous he was, and she dumb and bowing
with shame. How they parted was to her a mystery, but that their hands
touched, and at the touch all her bone and flesh seemed to go liquid,
and her knees trembled as with an immensity of fear. And nothing
seemed stable in the world but his great hot hand, that trembled too....
Bowed with shame she was, troubled, blind in purpose, all the familiar
things of her house and lands were now unfamiliar, unimportant. The
long day dragged, and in her heart was a storm, like a hot wind from
the desert. She refuged in her inner rooms, in the coolness of her
inner rooms, but that brought no relief, and restlessly she must come
out again. The Asian sun crept slowly from east to west, but Delilah
remained in a dull maze. "Am I ill?" she asked. "Am I stricken with
some strange disease?" But no. "I am insane," she thought. "I must
put it out of my head. I must n't think." Slowly, slowly the day
wheeled by; but out of her head it would not go. And her face went
white and slowly she whispered to herself: "I am a bad woman. I never
knew before. Oh, shame, shame and woe! I am an evil woman!"
The Asian sun dropped into the hissing sea, and came the soft Syrian
dusk, and the swift coolth of the night. The heat of mind and body
went with the heat of the day. There remained only a deep longing,
that seemed to be a nostalgia of the infinite. Without, the night was
blue, there was only a little wind among the apple-trees, and all the
flowers had closed until dawn should come, but the birds were unsilent
and the earth itself was restless, now spring was here.
The night wind cooled her sweet brow and ruffled the dark perfumed hair
at her temples. The cool night wind, like cool water. Then arose in
Delilah a desire for it, and she wandered out among the vines and
apple-trees, touching them, as she passed, in sympathy, for it seemed
to her that they must share her yearning. Though all was darkness, yet
all was not rest. Somewhere the sheep were grazing, and she could
imagine the gods of the nearer East walking the earth, the passionate,
seeking gods, the ever-young ones; they walked beside her, their slim,
brown, beautiful bodies, their liquid eyes. All the longing of the
night came to her lips in a little song--an air, and faltering,
unthought words.
"O Spring, which begins now," went the throbbing contralto.
There was a rustle among the trees. Her heart stopped beating.
"Is some one there? Who is there? Who?" But she knew well who was
there.
"Who is it? Who is it?"
She saw the great bulk in the blue night, like a giant, like some great
giant of the earth.
"It is I--Samson."
"What--how--" Words would not come to her. Nor would words mean
anything. "Why--"
She put out her hands--she knew not for what reason, perhaps to thrust
him away--her slim white hands in the dusk. He seized them. Once
again she throbbed from head to foot, and her knees became weak, and
all of her melted. And she fell forward, will having left her, on the
great bearded chest.
"I am dying," she murmured. "O my God, I die!"
V
Now they were married; and he had come to live in her house, the low,
pleasant house in the valley of Sorek, the white and cool house....
Without, the Syrian flowers grew in the garden, the white and blue and
little red flowers, the bees droned.... Cool dairies and enclosures
with great stacks of corn; and in the meadows the dappled kine grazed,
and on the hillsides the heavy-fleeced sheep. Within, her hand maidens
tended the whirring spinning-wheels, and all the graciousness of a
great house was there, cool water-jars that Persian potters had made,
and stuffs from Damascus, and rugs on the walls from cunning Eastern
looms, and furniture fashioned by the proud Syrian craftsmen. Her
house had been a house loved by all, the young Philistine poets and
elder statesmen and calm, subtle priests. And the strain and weariness
of affairs had come on them, they would say: "Let us go out to
Delilah's house at Sorek, and rest in the orchard of the bees." ... But
now, now Samson was there, and things were different.
Through all Philistia the news had gone, that Delilah had become
infatuated with and married the guerilla leader, and the young men
stormed. Was she mad? Or what had he done to her? And an immense
disgust arose in them. Delilah, to marry that! Delilah, of all women!
Delilah, beautiful, gifted, with all her tradition, to be bound to this
ragamuffin warrior! This fatuous boaster, with his red hair of comedy,
and yokel whiskers! How disgusting, how degrading! And they had
offered her all their hearts and poetry, and she had chosen this. O
Delilah! Delilah!
Older men and women said nothing. Some of them understood. The
freakish and terrible lightning that passion is, and how it strikes.
In some women that is what strong drink is to men, a mocker and a
raging thing. A pity, though, Delilah... And the priests shook their
heads. It will not last, they said, and her heart will be broken.
Though it was pain to them, still they came to see her, to let her know
that nothing mattered, she was their friend always.... They had to
suffer seeing the great red one at the head of the table, hearing his
jokes and reminiscences. And solemnly he would speak of his birth, and
claim supernatural happenings at it, angels appearing and going up in
pillars of fire.... And the company made awkward comments, and Delilah
lowered her eyes....
Sometimes a great rage against the Philistines would take him, and he
would give vent to it by telling at the table of his fight at
Ramath-leki when he had annihilated the Philistine patrol with the
first weapon to hand, a great bone he had found in the desert sands.
After many years and much telling he had exaggerated the deed out of
all proportion, until from ten it had become a thousand men.
"And do you know what that bone was?" He would put his immense hands
on the table and lean forward.
"The jawbone of an ass," he roared with the thunderous laughter. "Ho!
ho! The jawbone of an ass. With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon
heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men."
But worse than his rage and boasting was his good humor. When they
spoke to Delilah of some new poet in Tyre, or of some subtle new
writings of the Egyptians he would break in with his terrible question:
"Did they know any riddles?" And without waiting for an answer he
would tell them of the sinister conundrum he had propounded on the
occasion of his first marriage. It seems, as he told it, that when he
was courting his first wife, who they all knew "had turned out no
good," he explained as he patted Delilah's hand, he met a young lion at
Timnath, and it roared at him, and he caught it up and rent it, "and I
had nothing but my two hands." He transacted his business, and went
home, and when he was coming for the wedding, he looked to see if the
lion's carcass was there where he had thrown it, and it was still
there, and a swarm of bees and honey were in it, and the honey was
good. "Fine eating," he told them.
At the marriage feast he proposed a riddle, wagering thirty fine linen
sheets and thirty changes of garments that the guests would not answer
in seven days. "And if you can't find it out, you pay me thirty sheets
and thirty changes of garments," he laughed. "They were all
Philistines, and all thought themselves clever fellows.
"So I said: 'Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong
came forth sweetness. Expound me that,' said I, 'or pay up. Or pay
up,' said I."
And he looked around the table, silent, a great grin under his red
beard.
"And did they expound it?" Some one asked at length.
"They did. 'What is sweeter than honey?' they answered, with a smile
on their faces, 'and what is stronger than a lion?' They got around
the wife, do you see, and she gave them the answer.' I told them that,
too. 'If you had not plowed with my heifer,' said I, 'you had not
found out my riddle.' So I lost the wager."
"And did you pay up?"
"I did. And that's funnier than the riddle. I went down to Ashkelon,
and killed thirty men there, and took their belongings, and gave the
thirty changes of garments to them that found out the riddle. So it
cost me nothing, do you see, and I kept my word.
"But I never looked at the wife after. I could n't. I took a kind of
hate against her. She married another fellow."
A great embarrassment arose among all the company, so full of shame
were they for their hostess; but over her fine, sweet face no shadow
passed. She might have been married to a king, so calm and dignified
she was. A great lady, she!