Changeling, and Other Stories
"Away, harlot!" And he struck at her blindly. Only the tips of his
fingers touched her shoulder, but the force of them sent her to the
ground. Her household crouched to spring.
"For God's sake, no!" she almost screamed at them.
"The Philistines are upon me. They have put out my eyes!" he roared.
He went stumbling piteously through the orchard, the trunks of the
trees hurtling him, the branches striking his defenseless face.
Somehow he gained the road: "Delilah, the great whore, enticed me, and
the Lords of the Philistines put out my eyes--" his piteous bellow was
like the crying of some stricken animal. Delilah called a serving-lad.
"Go after my lord Samson," she said, "and lead him whithersoever he
wishes."
All afternoon and evening, and late into the night she sat white and
stricken, waiting for his step, waiting for news of him. In the
darkness a horse galloped up. An officer of the Philistines sought her.
"Have you news of Samson?"
"Yes, Delilah. He is in Gaza, in the prison-house."
"In the prison-house! What has he done?"
"He has done nothing, Delilah, he is--he is mad and blind, and would
come in. We tried to send him home to you, but he wouldn't come. And
he would n't go to the Hebrews. We were afraid of something happening
to him, so we took him in.... What shall we do, Delilah?"
"Would you--would you let him stay?"
"If you wish it, Delilah."
"He will be least unhappy there."
She knew somehow, in her heart, that never again would she lie in his
arms, never again be wife to the husband in him. She would take him
back, take him back gladly. Though no longer had she great passion for
him--that had died when he struck and insulted her before her servants.
She had a great pity and affection for the poor driven man. She was
the only one who understood him. "Ah, poor man! poor man!" she cried.
And in some ways he was only a child.
In a few days she went down to the prison house. The officials brought
her to where he was grinding corn in the yard.
"We put him at it, Delilah, to keep his mind off his trouble." She
nodded.
"Samson," she called. He moved his head slightly.
"Don't you know me, Samson?"
"I know you. You are the harlot Delilah, who enticed me, and gave me
into the hands of the Lords of the Philistines. Delilah, I know you
well."
"Samson, will you come home to my house? Let me make you comfortable
there."
"You would put out my tongue, Delilah, and burn off my hands, as you
put out my eyes. I know you, Delilah!"
"Then will you go to the Hebrews?"
"No!" he replied sullenly.
A sudden rush of tears to her eyes made her go out. She could no
longer bear to look upon him. He had been so strong once, so
courageous. He had looked in the sun's eye. And now, blind and
broken--oh, poor dear! ... She stumbled as she went.
At the door of the prison house the governor shuffled uncomfortably:
"We shall be very good to him, Delilah, as kind as we know how," he
uttered.
There was a great lump in her throat, so she could say nothing. But he
got his thanks from her twisted smile, her wet eyes....
VII
And now she was alone in her house, and to her mute surprise,
everything went on: grasses grew, cows lowed at the milking hour, the
fleece grew on sheep and had to be sheared, the grapes ripened on the
vines. And she lived, still. Her hair did not become gray, nor her
face take on any mark of tragedy, only a new sweetness, and strength.
And her love and her marriage was now nothing but a strange story of a
strange woman and a strange man. Not quite a story, even, but a
collection of incidents that might be important and again might not.
And the great love she had experienced had become nebulous, was
drifting away, so that she could hardly believe she had not seen it in
others, but for its intimacy, its great intimacy.... And he was more
nebulous to her than if he were dead....
She heard of him. She heard that from the prison walls he harangued
his white-faced, scared tribesmen, reviling his hosts, and above all
reviling her, telling the secrets of her love as the machinations of
some evil woman, and referring to her visit, saying that her heart was
merry and that she had come to have him make her sport.... But after a
little while none paid attention to him, so stale become miracles,
except his own tribesmen. It was only the chatter of some crazed
religious patriot; people shrugged their shoulders, and forgot soon who
Delilah was, never imagining the great lady of Sorek as having been
wife and lover to this poor crazed giant, though they had known it to
be true. Everything strange grows commonplace with days, and with more
days grows negligible.
So passed a year....
Just when she had become reconciled to this strange situation, herself
honored and in luxury, her husband mad and blind and insisting on being
a prisoner of the Philistines, just when she had striven to make and
succeeded in making this seem a normal, a usual thing, a courier from
Gaza came.... What his business was she never imagined.
"Delilah, Samson is dead!"
"Samson!" It never even chilled her, so ridiculous did such a
statement seem. "Samson is in Gaza."
"I come from Gaza, Delilah, and Samson is dead."
"Samson dead?" That turbulent temperament, that immense vitality, that
gigantic frame,--surely there was one whom Death could not touch, at
least for nearly a century, when he would be old and weak and tired.
But not now! No! "What do you mean?"
"Delilah, Samson was wandering through the town. He had asked the
master of the prison-house if he might go to see the new temple of
Daigon. Though he could n't see, he wanted to feel it, its pillars and
stone. A little lad brought him. And there was a scaffolding in front
on which three men were working, and he knocked against it, and felt
the pillars, and stopped....
"And he put his hands on two of the pillars of the scaffolding, and
listened to the workmen above, and then called out: 'O Lord God,
remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this
once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my
eyes.'
"And he took hold of the two middle pillars of the scaffolding--"
"Oh!" Delilah's voice came in a long moan. "Oh! my poor love! my poor
lord! oh! ... The workmen," she asked, "were they--killed?"
"One was lamed and one bruised and one had a shoulder smashed, but only
Samson, Delilah, is dead."
"Samson is dead!" she said dully. And then she quickened. "Are you
sure that he isn't only stunned?"
"No, Delilah; Samson is dead."
"I shall go with you...."
They had taken him into a cool corner of the temple, and when she saw
him there was no longer doubt in her, or--or hope. He lay there with a
great dignity, a new majesty, all the pain and baffledness had gone
from his face and the poor empty eyes were closed....
And she sank to her knees, and took his head on them, she saw with a
little glad wringing of the heart that once more the great golden cloak
of hair had grown ...
"Delilah, where is he to--stay?" The captain of the guards leaned
toward her.
"Not with us, kinsman. He might n't rest. He will sleep with his own."
"Then shall I tell his brethren, and the house of his father to come?"
"Do, kinsman," she said. She turned her head to the shadows. "Tell
them to come and take him," she said.
She was like a woman in stone but for her strained voice, and for the
fingers twisting, twisting, twisting under the red-gold cloak of hair.
"Go now and tell them," she said. "Tell them, but don't let them
come," she said, "for--for just a little while...."
And now night had come, and the little lamps of Gaza burned clear in
the blue softness. The sun had gone down in the west, and the silver
blade of the moon had all but followed. Delilah felt cold and stiff,
and there were tears in her heart that would not come to her eyes for
relief. The heaviness of an old sorrow, it never went, and she did n't
know if she wanted it to go.... She rose to go within.
"Delilah, the great harlot," a raucous voice accused her from the
blackness of the street. "She enticed our lord Samson and made him
sleep on her knees--and she pressed him daily with her words and urged
him, so that his soul was vexed unto death--"
She stopped and listened. Venom was sprayed against her from the
street. Hatred arose like a pillar. Suddenly the tears came, the
welcome tears, and gratitude went in a white shaft from her to the
bitter men in the streets, for this: that after so many years great
Samson was not forgotten, that he lived in their mind and hearts still,
as in hers.
A QUATRAIN OF LING TAI FU'S
Because of his perfect, or nearly perfect, English there were many who
believed that Li Sin was only masquerading as a Chinaman. Because of
the slightly slit Mongol eyes, and the swarthy color of his skin, there
were others who explained his enigma by guessing he was a half-breed.
It never occurred to either party that Li Sin had been sent to Eton, in
England, at the age of thirteen, and that from Eton he had gone to
Oxford. They would not have believed it if you told them. There is a
dogma abroad to the effect that every Chinaman must of necessity speak
English like a Cantonese laundryman or like an attendant at a chop-suey
restaurant.
It never occurred to them, either, that Li Sin was a Manchu duke, with
a genealogy that extended back to the days of Tang. It never occurred
to them that the slant-eyed Manchu was as big a physician as any of the
high-priced practitioners on the Avenue. To the descendants of
fur-peddlers and deck-scrubbers who graced the Social Register, or to
the millionaires of Long Island who had soared into the financial
heavens on an accidental oil-spout or who had amassed their fortunes by
the less reputable forms of mine-grabbing--to these, and to their wives
and daughters, Li Sin was merely a tradesman or shopkeeper. It did not
particularly matter to them that his shop on Fifth Avenue was filled
with little gold Buddhas whose eyes were fine emeralds, with pieces of
lacquer which it had taken an artist his lifetime to do, with peachblow
vases transparent as a hand against the sun, with porcelains sheer as
fine silks, with cloisonne jars that made staid experts rave like men
in liquor. But the strictures of the ignorant did not worry Li Sin in
the least. He would only raise his eyebrows and smile his bland,
inscrutable smile.
Li Sin has left Fifth Avenue now, and in his store, which was in those
days a temple of truth as well as a temple of beauty, a very lying and
exceedingly dishonest Armenian reigns. In his own city of Tientsin the
Manchu lives in stately leisure. He has reverted to his own name,
Hsien Po, which is great in Manchu annals. He has reverted to his
Manchu dress of brocaded blouse and silken trousers, to his mandarin's
cap with its mandarin's button. He is very proud of his pear gardens,
and he divides his time between walking in them, reading the analects
of Confucius, and giving the benefit of his marvelous medical knowledge
gratuitously to the poor. He is happy, I hope, for if ever a man
deserved to be happy, it is he.
He is gone now, is Li Sin, but I can see him as plainly as though he
were standing beside me. A rather squat sort of man, with a squarish
face and high cheek-bones. His shining black hair was parted smoothly
at the side, and there was a look of health in the transparent quality
of his brown skin and in the whites of his slanting eyes. There was
always a quiet smile on his lips, and he wore the tweed and broadcloth
of America with as much ease as the blouse and silken trousers of his
own land. The only Oriental hint in his clothes was the suppressed