In her face now, that once had a proud, singing beauty, were dignity
and power and wisdom. Strands of gray in her hair and shadows near her
eyes. In all Gaza, in all Philistia, there was not one to refuse her
reverence, excepting, of course, the strange gipsy people who contended
she had ruined their champion and lord.
A queer people, they! A strange, inimical folk, who had come into
Canaan out of Egypt, headed by magicians who had cloven the Red Sea--so
they claimed--and their hand was against the dwellers in Canaan. For
centuries now they had been an irritating minor political problem, and
when the question of relations with Egypt sagged, or there was a lull
in the discussion of the great trade route to the East, the matter of
the Israelites always arose. Here they had harried a town; there
squatted on a public common. And war on a large scale was impossible
against them. Send armies to subdue them, and they became separate
desert units, like any other tribes. And before the armies had
returned to their garrisons, the Israelites were back. The
Philistines, with their suave Egyptian tolerance, could only smile.
What could one do against a people of that kind?
For centuries now, they had remained turbulent, cunning, breakers of
the peace, with Philistia rather contemptuous of them, rather proud,
not unaffectionate. No nation in the world had a problem quite like
them. And the more kindly, more tolerant Philistia became, the greater
the hatred of the Israelites. For years they would dwell at peace in
Philistine cities, then a strange national pique would come on them,
and they would march out into the desert chanting to their harsh God,
blaming themselves cruelly for having lived in comfort, and prophets
would arise among them who said bitter things, lashing them with a
white fury, and agitators would preach war, and it was then Philistia
had to be careful and send troops out, for one never knew the moment
that the young men would make a raid on a township or an estate of
vineyards. A sharp clash, a little guerilla warfare, and all would be
over. Wise old politicians claimed that every time the Israelites were
defeated, they gained a little more ground, but politicians were always
pessimists. And, also, what matter if they did?
Delilah remembered that as a child in her father's house in the valley
Sorek she had been brought up to the belief that all Israelites were
riotous, dissatisfied. They were splendid herdsmen, but beyond that
they had no virtues. And the little Hebrew children were looked down
upon, because they were so poor. Oh! the cruel snobbishness of little
children! A race apart, an inferior race, Delilah thought in her
youth, and had smiled at the thought of their crude, melodramatic god,
of whom they walked in fear. Their god was so limited, so concrete.
None of the symbolism of Daigon, half man and half fish, whom the
Mediterranean sailors thanked when the great silver draughts weighed
down their nets; none of Baal, god of the sun, the fecund divinity who
increased the herds of kine, and whose rays nurtured the soil and
brought forth the sweet blue grass; none of the grace of Ashtoreth, the
goddess of the dusky night, the terror and the delight and the mystery,
the goddess of the ripe breasts and great passionate eyes....
So Delilah viewed them with little interest and not a little contempt,
a turbulent, annoying, ignorant, clever people; their quaint folk-songs
and dances, their peculiar religious revivals, their passionate
hatreds... Undependable--that is what they were.
Came her youth and her growing into womanhood.... She wondered
sometimes if he of her young days, for all his closeness to the Pharaoh
of Egypt, his Egyptian palace, his Egyptian wife, ever remembered the
warm green days of Sorek, and how they had grown together from fifteen
to twenty-three.
Nothing had ever been said between them of marriage, but it was
accepted by them that they would marry, as it was accepted that the sun
shines, and with night come the stars. They might have been two girls
together, or they might have been two boys, so sweet was the friendship
between them.
The adventure of life unclosing itself came to them together--all the
beauty of the world, the wild smiling flowers, the sun dropping over
the hills, the clamor of birds in spring as they raided the seeded
fields, the little fish that jumped in the pools when the winds stilled
and evening came--all that was a tremendous bond. Even now when she
thought of places in the valley of her childhood she could picture them
only as background for his calm young face. They seemed natural, the
blossoming of apple-trees and her young lover's face.
And Delilah's dreams--five years of dreaming, of the governing of a
house, and the regiment of maid-servants, of little children. Five
years dreaming! And he had gone into Egypt and had never come back.
Only stories returned, of his success, of his offices, of his wife....
She had thought, being a young woman then, that what was killed with
such a tremendous shock was her love, but she knew now, now that she
was nine-and-forty years, that what had died was a dream. She had been
shocked, disoriented, and her life, which had been so carefully
planned, suddenly had no more meaning.
It had made a woman of her, though, and made her proud. She must have
something to do, to think about. Love and all thoughts of love she put
aside. In order to escape from herself she began to study people,
questions of the day, this, that. It was probably the woman loving the
underdog that turned her eyes on the question of the poor Hebrew,
rather than to the glory of Egypt, or the power of the merchant cities.
She became their friend, and they came to know her. Probably they
robbed her a little, but the cost was so small compared to the luxury
of escape.... All her friends smiled at her hobby and spoke of the
Israelites as "Delilah's Hebrews," and they wondered how a woman of her
looks and standing should bother with these things. Why did n't she
get married, they asked? Or was she becoming queer? One of these
strange women who took more interest in public affairs than a home. So
many of them were becoming that way.
But Delilah only smiled. They were her anodyne. She liked their
strange folk-dances; their wailing, nostalgic songs. And their
legends--there was about them a quaintness and simplicity she
loved--Adam and Eve in the garden; the story of Noah and his ark; the
naïve legend of Babel; and the newer history of the leader who had been
found by the Egyptian princess in the bulrushes--what was his name?
Moses! That was it.... How simple they were, how refreshingly simple,
the dear things!