"Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death."
"Oh!" went a long shudder from the king.
"What is it, Solomon? Does anything affright you?"
"No, no, Balkis."
"Then come over to me, Solomon. Come where I can see your face. Your countenance is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. Come."
"Remember your father, David," came the voice beneath the window, "son of Jesse, turned from wisdom. Remember how his chiefest joy, Absalom his son, died. Remember how he stood against God, the prophet of the Lord, and the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed, three days' time; and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men.
"And the angel of the Lord stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to 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.