All was well. Life and death, all in good hands.
She had often thought to herself, sitting there, as an old person might, that things did not seem as well as they were in her young days. But on second thoughts she discovered they were just the same. Life was a constant, as Mr. Valance, her husband used to say of things. Oftentimes while she sat in a corner and heard young people talk, she was amused, for they seemed to think she knew nothing of modern life. And life could not be modern or ancient. Life was a constant, as Mr. Valance, her husband, used to say. They had only manufactured new terms, discovered new angles. She smiled as she thought of their talks of psychoanalysis; of how one was very complex; and how one must get rid of obsessions by discovering them and talking about them to a specialist. One did the same in her day. One called the obsessions troubles, and on one's knees one poured one's heart out to God. And their talk of psychic things--why, when she was a grown woman, did n't they have the queer Eddys in Vermont, and that strange Russian woman, Madame Blavatsky, and Home, the medium, who floated through a window, feet first! And she was sure that when she was young there was just as intricate card games as bridge. And their talk of Socialism and man's rights! Did they forget that Lincoln freed the slaves? Ah, the young!
She remembered a man saying--an old man--that what was wrong with the new generation was this: they left nothing to God. They wanted to do everything their own way. Fifty years ago, he said, every one was cognizant of God.
But were they? pondered the old lady. Yes, they went to church. But did n't they go just because one went, as nowadays one goes to the movies? A habit. And did the rounded sentences of the ministers mean anything to the young? No. And the hymns--they were just melodies. One sang them, as young boys sang college songs. It was only when one was grown, man or woman tall, and the great wolves of the world harried one, harried until one could sense their white teeth, their red slavering mouths, and there was a blank wall and no escape--it was only then one felt the Immense Hand. And rarely afterward did one speak of it. It seemed like a strange secret order, being initiated to God. She was sure that it was like that to-day, as it was fifty years ago, as it must ever have been, as it must ever be.
Looking up from her sewing an instant, she saw Berenice coming toward the house. It must be later than she thought. It must be lunch-time. They must make Barry, poor boy, stop now. Brain work was so fatiguing and he should n't overdo it.
She paused for a breath, watching the brown head, the apple-green dress. She knew the girl's secret, though Berenice had never said anything, hinted at all about a baby. But the little exalted look in the eyes--
"I must say a prayer to-night," thought the old lady.
He got up from the desk. No! it was no use. Nothing would come to-day. Another fruitless morning. If he could only find the trick those fellows had!
Yes, but they all had something to write about, and he had nothing: this wretched urban setting, this calm, uninteresting sound. And he knew nobody. There was no encouragement, no inspiration. His mother, dear old lady--she knew nothing, could tell him nothing. And his wife--she was a dear girl, and he loved her, but-- Oh, there was nothing to write about; no drama; no people of drama.
WISDOM BUILDETH HER HOUSE
I
Whilst her great train was picking its way carefully from the mountain-tops of Abyssinia, eight thousand treacherous feet of height, to the littoral of the Red Sea, the slim brown queen had experienced only impatience. In the cool quietness of her mountain home it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to arise and visit the young king of the Jews. On every step of the long journey downhill it had seemed natural. In her own country it seemed right she should do as she had chosen. But now they had left Abyssinia, left the great tropical forests with the gigantic candelabra trees, left the arid cactus-covered plains, left the pleasant green valleys where water trilled and the boxwood trees and wild roses and water cress grew, and had come to arid Ailet by the Red Sea. And here were great stretches of sand and mimosa, here half-naked, cunning black men, here a heat like a pall, here the brooding mystery of Egypt, that knows all things and is silent to questioning.
A different world, and in the different atmosphere there came a faltering, a waver into the heart of Balkis. Was she a fool? For two miles her royal train stretched. First, the fighting men in their short white robes, graceful, powerful as cats; then the line of laden camels with tinkling bells; then the great black elephants with their gleaming black skin, their gleaming white tusks, their painted trappings; then the litters of her women; then her own litter; a welter of attendants, bearing the provisions of the journey and the present she was bringing to Solomon, the young king of the Jews: spices; and gold of Ophir; and large diamonds from the Abyssinian mines; apes--great red-faced baboons that had the strength of ten men, and delicate blue monkeys, pretty as birds; and peacocks that outdid precious stones in the shimmer of their colors; and tusks of ivory, large as the branches of great trees.... Her heart wavered, and for an instant it occurred to her in panic to go back. But if she returned now, she would be dissatisfied all her life, and grow inward, and become maybe hard as a stone, and that was against nature, for all things grow outward, as a tree grows outward, to fill up the empty spaces of Death....
"No! no! I shall go on."
Up in the cool mountains decision had seemed so natural, action so easy. But below in humid Egypt subtleties of thought seemed native to the weak Nilotic breeze, and she could see herself as though she were another woman. She could see her orphaned childhood, when the care of all her counselors was to have her gracious and kind, and sweet as a small bird's song. They had instructed her that queens are not made by crowns, but by graciousness and strength and courtesy, so that any beholder might know she was a queen were she dressed in the garments of her humblest slave. And she had grown older into young maidenhood, and wise old heads had helped her govern and take care of her wild mountain folk, and came a few years more and she was twenty-two, and the counselors were too old to counsel, being either querulous old men or dotards, living in forgotten days, and Balkis herself had to rule, being queen. To be queen alone would have been simple.
But being queen, she was lonely, and being gracious and just, she was wise, and being wise, questions arose in her like a spring of well water. Thought rose like a hawk and swept in widening gyres, but arrived nowhere. Thought and emotion were with her in the red Afric dawn. Thought and emotion were with her like the flickering lightning and terrible thunder of the Abyssinian hills. Thought and emotion came with blue mountainy twilight. And there was none to share them. None to ask. None to satisfy. Being a queen, there was none she might consort with but kings and queens, and the kings of the states about her were shrewd political men, who could not understand what a young girl felt, and her young womanhood quivering like the jessamy bough.... Their eyes would be on the riches of Ethiopia; so they were out.... And the queens of Africa, outside herself, were not queens, but tribal chieftainesses, half priestess and half prostitute, Amazonian, untutored.... She could not talk to them.
And so she had decided there was nothing for her to do but to govern justly, to grow old gracefully, to weep a little in private, to find it hard to go asleep of nights, to look forward to death as a sentry awaits the dawn, until a swart Egyptian trader had brought word of the new king of the Jews, now David was gone. A boy he was, they said, a strange dreaming boy, with none of his father's delight in war, and with a gift of strange inspired wisdom. She was told the story of two women, that were harlots, and how they each claimed a certain child as theirs, and of Solomon's judgment.
"And how old is the young king of the Jews?" Sheba asked.
"Twenty-three or twenty-four."
"A year or so older than I."
And she was told how Hiram, King of Tyre, that shrewd man, was a friend to the young prince, and how the arrogant Pharaoh of Egypt conceived it worth his while to make a treaty with him.
"And is he married?"
"No, Sheba, he is not married," the trader vouched....
II
The girl in her said: "Go back. They will think you are seeking love. They will think that with your white teeth, your sloe-black eyes, your color of fine bronze, your body, lithe and sleek and graceful as a cat's, you want love from the king of the Jews." And all her face flushed at that thought, and she debated whether she should send for the captain general of the fighting men and tell him to face his troops about and return to her Ethiopia. But the queen in her rose and said: "What care I what they say? Does Sheba need the love of any lowland king, or plead for alliance? Sheba is Sheba, and what Sheba does is Sheba's business." And the woman of her brooded softly: "I will go on. Somewhere there is an answer to all the questions, and if he does n't know the answer, perhaps he can help me to find them."