"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.