Changeling, and Other Stories 49 – Byrne · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Changeling, and Other Stories 49Part 8 · Chapter 5
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Changeling, and Other Stories 49
Part 8 · Chapter 5
ByrneEnglish
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!
She understood now, looking back, how pathetic a figure the red giant was, had she only had the eyes, the wisdom to see then. He was so lost among the suave, sophisticated Philistines, who could hurt more with a word than he could with his great brawny hands. Beneath his swelling thews he was only a child. He wanted to be as important as the guests in her house. Feeling they despised him for his origin, and his manners, his boastfulness and his arrogance were only a defense.
Little by little now Delilah's friends disappeared, and she was glad of it, for she hated to see Samson despised, disliked and their pitying looks for her hurt her terribly. And the days of peace were dreadful to him; his, too, the tragedy of the soldier now that war was over, and no more exhilaration, keenness, importance. The tolerance of his old enemies was an insult to him. On their hatred he had thriven. Their hatred made him important. If their hatred went, he would no longer be the great Samson, he would only be a giant of the hills.
He could n't believe they did n't hate him--how could they do otherwise, he having killed so many?--and a great suspicion arose in him. They were a noted race for stratagems, these Philistines, and might they not now be planning something against him? Delilah, for instance! It was strange, he thought, how a woman of her standing should marry him like that. He could n't understand. He must watch her.
He was forever, also, meeting his old tribesmen, seeing them more now than ever, for he would run to them when oppressed by the Philistine atmosphere. And the Philistines as a whole they regarded as deadly enemies. They never believed in their peaceful intentions. Though they were in a way proud of Samson's great marriage, yet they distrusted it. And by hint and innuendo they sought to put him on his guard. He nodded importantly. He did n't need to be told about the Philistines, he said; he'd keep his eye on them. "Had anything...?" they crowded around him. Well, he wasn't saying, but he was watching; he smiled. His wife? Let them not worry; he did n't trust women very far.
And relieved, and once more raised in importance and self-esteem, he would swagger back to the house.
Sometimes, too, in Delilah's place, he would be seized with a great desire to make friends with the young Philistines; and when Delilah wasn't there, he would show off his immense strength, felling an ox with one blow of his fist. Once he had himself bound with seven green withes, stouter than rope, stronger than chains, and with a cruel burst of strength stood free, snapping them as though they were threads. And once he had his arms bound with new rope, breaking the bond without any effort. But his greatest triumph was having his hair woven into a great spinning-wheel and fastened to the pin, and walking away took with him the pin of the beam, and the web. But the Philistines had seen more intricate and showy feats of strength by the Egyptians' black slaves. And it did not impress them over-much. No matter what he did, he could not get into sympathy with them. He was a stranger in his wife's house. Also he could not understand why she should seem humiliated by these displays. Did not a woman love a strong man? Shouldn't she be proud? Well, why was n't she?
Somehow the story of these trials of strength reached the Hebrew settlements, and they construed it that the Philistines were seeking to take him. When he came among them, magniloquent, magnificent, they questioned him and he gave no answer, letting them believe that his old enemies were spreading nets for him. A great terror arose in them. And they tried to persuade him to come back to them. But he would n't. He was equal to all their stratagems, he hinted. "But the women!" they said, "nothing passes the cunning of a woman. Better leave her, Samson; better leave her now."
"The woman pleases me well." And he would n't be moved.
The woman pleased him, but he did n't love her; and he displeased her, but she loved him. In Delilah's heart was so much aching love for him, such depth of passion, that at times she was ashamed. It seemed to her that she had given everything in her to this man. No matter how displeased she was, no matter how humiliated by his boastings, by his circus tricks, when night came, and he put out his hand to her, all the irritation of the day passed, and her being sang.
She had chosen her husband, and what she had chosen was her own business. No matter how queer he was, she could n't have him laughed at.... So they stayed away, and she was glad of it and little by little the great wonder of her marriage provoked no more passion, no more discussion. Only when a stranger appeared, or some old friend, and asked in the public assemblies of Delilah, and the incongruous marriage was once more brought up and discussed. Shoulders shrugged.
"And is she happy?"
"We don't know. We don't see much of her any more."
A new strange element came up in this isolation: Samson did n't like being left alone by the Philistines. Somewhere in his mind arose the theory that it was a new insult, a new harm. He grew short with his wife; became irritable; nothing pleased him. He was not a farmer, a warrior he! he complained. He was entitled to relaxation, amusement, conversation. He was no vegetable--
"Then, Samson, you would like people here?"
He did n't like to be left alone, as though he had the plague, or treated as though he were nobody, by God!
"Then they shall come, Samson."
But ah! there was something, he objected. He did n't like this damned superciliousness, this accursed Philistine superiority--
"You imagine it, Samson. You are too sensitive, my big lover."
"Then they are not superior? are not better than I?"
"Of course not, great Samson. In every way you are as good as they, the same as they. You would look the same as they, only better-looking, more magnificent, if only--"
"If only what?"
"Oh, don't be angry with me, lover, if I tell you. There is only one thing remarkable about you; one thing they can criticize. If only your hair--"
"Ha! my hair!"
"O Lover, without it, you would look so great and splendid, and dignified. There would be nothing to criticize."
"But Delilah, my strength is in my hair."
"O lover, lover, don't be silly!"
"Also, my parents took a vow--"
"But darling, your parents never knew you were to be such a great man, and that you would have to command respect from the nation--"
"Of course, of course. But, Delilah, if my strength goes--"
"Dearest, it won't go. How could it?"
"And they won't have anything to criticize then! Ha! Then off it comes!"
She was so happy, the tears came into her eyes. This strange desire to wear his hair long as a woman's had been a bugbear to her. This foppishness, freakishness, superstition, whatever it was, it made him remarkable. She could n't suffer to have men smile at him.
"If you only knew how happy you make me!"
He was ludicrously nervous as she shore off the great red braids. He was more, he was frightened. The burden gone, he strolled casually around, picked up a little bar of iron at the fireplace, twisted it to form a loop, was satisfied. Glanced at himself in the long metal mirror, smiled.
"I think it suits me well."
A thrill of delight came to Delilah, a new, a younger Samson had appeared. Her heart went pit-a-pat.... A great dignity sat on him now, and he weighed his words at the table. Gone with his hair was his old arrogance, and seemingly his race hatred.... The Philistines spoke among themselves, wondering how she had done it. This quiet, well-groomed man, remarkable only for his size and height, could this be the same red rebel whom they had known a few short months ago? A wonderful woman.
But when the Hebrews heard of it, a great chill fell on their hearts, and they wrung their hands. "They have cut off our Samson's hair. Oh, woe!" they cried. "The woman enticed him, and he a Nazarite unto God from his mother's womb. Oh, woe! Oh, woe! Gone is his strength now, and gone is glory!" But the red one, all agog with his new worldliness, paid no heed to them, went never near them.
For some brief weeks Delilah knew happiness such as she never believed possible in earth or heaven.... So fine, so strong he looked, so greatly he acted, so--so fully he loved.... Of course it could n't have lasted, she knew now. How fast catastrophe!
Quietly he said one day: "How soon it gets dark! Night falls faster than it used. An hour ago the sun was shining, and now it is dark."
She felt as if some cruel fingers had seized her heart, her throat. She froze to the ground.
"What did you say?"
"I say, why don't the maidens bring lights?"
"Not yet, dear heart.... Let us stay in the warm dusk. Wait, I take your hand."
A few days later he stumbled and all but fell, was clumsy. She flew to his side.
"My eyes," he said, "a touch of sun. Nothing particular." But she sent for a physician.
"It's nothing," Samson said. "Something I 've eaten. I 'll go to sleep."
"Dear Samson, to please me." The physician examined his eyes.
"Well?" Delilah drew him aside.
"The early days in the desert.... He is going blind."
"Is there no hope, no cure?"
"None."
A little laugh of agony came from her. Great Samson blind! The little lover blind!... Oh, God!...
"Shall we tell him?"
"No, no!" she burst out. Maybe there was some mistake! "No. We sha'n't tell him."
A few days later came a great bellow from the garden!
"The sun has gone out of the sky," she heard him exalt. "The day of wrath is on us. The God of the Hebrews will judge the just and the unjust. O Philistines, your day has come. The sun has gone out of the sky."
She flew to him, her feet hardly touching the grass.
"The sun has gone out of the sky," he chanted; "now is silence, but soon the mountains will rend, the cliffs fall, and the Lord God of Hosts will appear in thunder!"
"Oh, Samson, Samson!" Her face was a wet mask of tears. Her arms went quickly about him. "Listen, Samson!"
"Delilah, the sun has gone out of the sky!"
"Samson, Samson, you are great, you are big, you are brave. Be brave now, heart of hearts--"
"The Day of Days is here. The sun has gone out of the sky."
"Worse, my darling, worse. Worse than that the sun should be gone from the sky. The sun, Samson, the sun--the sun has gone out of your eyes!"
