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.