Part 17

"I deny it," the lion stormed. "Can I forget the great black armies of the South, the glistening men with the silver armlets and the short keen spears? Not even of me were they afraid, those! Their drums resounded through veldt and plain, They asked only of the earth what they needed for their good. And when they hunted they hunted fair. They matched their strength against our speed. And their knowledge against our knowledge. And at night they sang and they danced beneath the moon.

"And now they are farm servants to the men who come overseas. They are not clean, as they once were. Their bodies that once were naked and glistening are caked with mud and covered with rags. And some of them are driven into the bowels of the earth, and the sunlight and the moonlight they were born to is kept from them. And they dig diamonds for men who are not satisfied with the luster of stars. And they who once fought me in the open with a spear now skulk with a gun."

"I remember an India that was," the tiger snarled, "a land of rajahs and temples, of brown dancing girls and men who played little flutes. They grew the green sugar-cane, and cotton they might spin on great wooden wheels. And their smiths hammered brass into strange antique shapes. And they worshiped God with singing and dancing in cool temples.

"What are the rajahs now, that once were the wonder of the earth, but little helot princes? And the ranees--the cinnamon-colored queens with the minute silver bells upon their bud-like toes--but despised native women? Are the bazaars filled with the quaint work of smiths? No, but with the meretricious trinkets of the West. And black-coated men seek to turn them from native immemorial gods. And the machine that throws pictures the mummers make, fights against the music and the dancing and the temple bells.

"The beauty I stand for is passing away."

"In Burma, whence I come," said the elephant, "there are jungles deeper than the jungle of Africa, or the Indian jungles. Great mossy trees, and painted flowers, and great brown rivers rolling to the sea. And the men there are beautiful as women, and the women beautiful as flowers.

"And once they paddled down the great brown river in glistening black canoes. They wore great gaudy sashes and had a flower in their teeth or a flower in their hair. Under the shadow of the great trees they paddled. And when they saw me they made reverence, saying, 'Our lord, the elephant!' On little reeds they made sweet, plaintive music.

"And now the great ancient trees are being cut down, and floated on the bosom of the hurt brown rivers. And the peace of the jungle is disturbed with the cough of the motor-boat, and oil is heavy on the warm jungle smells. And the men, beautiful as women, are clothed in soiled white garments; the rounded child-like bodies of the brown women chafe under a huddle of clothes. And when I am observed, the white man asks, demands, the help of the little brown men to hunt me, to whom they once did reverence, and I seem to hear no more sweet, plaintive music.

"From the quiet river I have seen the painted barges of the Pharaohs move along under the sweeps of the negro slaves. Color and majesty and dignity. And the shaven priests chanted their litanies at the change of the moon. And from the Sahara the desert tribes brought tribute and treasure to Egypt, the men with the white horses and the black tents. And the nodding dromedaries and camels and their tinkling bells. And the kings raised their pyramids, and the multitude of men like ants listened at sunrise to the great masonic prayer. And they left the Sphinx to denote their mystery. And Cleopatra, who was Lilith reborn, played with Rome for a doll.

"All these things have I seen: the magic of great Moses, and the flight of the Little God of Galilee; the perfumed Pharaohs; the sinister yellow priests; the gnarled masons at their secret prayers; and Cleopatra brown as a berry, magnificent as jewels, venomous as a snake; and the sculptor at work on the Sphinx.

"And now tourists unwrap the great kings, and hucksters chaffer where once the trains of the prince-merchants of Tyre passed, and we shall never see a Cleopatra any more.

"But I am not complaining. Men do not swim as well as in the elder days, nor handle a boat as surely."

"I know nothing of painted Pharaohs," said the great white bear, "nor anything of Indian queens. In the North are neither kings nor masons, but day and night and ice, and a little people. In summer is the great sun, white light, and grass that is green for a little, and the thunder of breaking bergs, and in winter no sun but the flaming aurora and the white illimitable miles!

"And the swarthy little people were happy then. In the long nights they sang, and they bowed to the gods in boulder and stream, and set out in the little kayaks on the Arctic seas to hunt the great solemn walrus, or they set off in sledges through the pathless wastes. They were a brave people, a healthy people.

"And came the boats hunting our sister the whale, and the whales taught the little swarthy people progress, and everywhere now they are cunning and degraded and crusted with sin, and a great plague makes them spit blood, and waste to nothingness, and die."

They all looked at the horse, but the horse was silent.

"Look back in the folds of your memory," the lion prompted. "Look back well! Can you not remember the great races in the Roman circus? Listen a little! Can you not hear the trumpets of Agincourt?"

"And you, little brother--" the bear swung his ponderous head toward the dog--"was there not a time when you lay before a fire in a rush-strewn hall? And now the houses are too little. They tell me--I do not know. And did you not once run barking joyously beside man on his horse? And now horses are out of fashion, are they not, little comrade? And the cars are too fast for your short legs."

There is another silence, and the angel looks at them piteously.

"I wish to my God I had some of them clever fellows here could argue with you. I never was much good in an argument, anyway, never having had the education. But let me tell you there 's angels could prove to you you 're all wrong. I wish they 'd come here and talk to you, but I don't suppose they 'd care much about us and our wee affairs. But--but how about music," he hazarded, "and poetry? Ay, and poetry."

"As to music--" the elephant threw up his trunk in a sneer--"what music can he make comparable to the birds of summer--the sun going down, and each bird with its separate song, blending into a gently-colored symphony, and the chime of the waves with it, and the rustle of the branches in the sundown breeze?"

"Ay, but poetry."

"It will need poetry," thundered the lion, "more poetry than can be ever written, to equalize the making ugly of earth. The great cliffs shamed by mean houses, and the splendid glades ruined that a train may pass. And the mouths of rivers spoiled by the slag of mills. And great noble trees hacked down. How many an epic to pay for a great forest dying, shepherd? How many a lyric for a tree where little trusting birds had their home?"

The angel throws out his hands abruptly.

"You have me," he says. "You have me!"

He braces with decision, rises to his full height, and suddenly there is nobleness.

"Well, which is it to be?" he asked. "Will you follow my plan, or do you insist I go immediately?"

"We insist."

He pauses an instant.

"Very well. I 'll go," he says. "I 'll go."

He looks all around the gathering. In spite of his decision, and his bracing, there is a great emotion brewing in him.

"Now, before I go, let me tell some of you something. Do you, Philip--" he turns to the bear--"be getting back North as fast as you can. You poor fellow, you must be murdered with the heat entirely, and you with the Arctic furs on. You 'll catch your death here. And as for you," he warns the crocodile, "don't be obstinate, there 's a good fellow! Keep to the water, and you 'll be all right. It's only when you get out, they can get after you. And my little friends the beavers--where are they? Childer, can you hear me?"

"But what's all this about?" asks the elephant.

"It's just for fear I 'm not coming back."

"But why aren't you coming back?" the lion growls.

"Och, it's just a notion. Are the beavers there at all, at all?"

"No, just a moment!" The tiger is on his feet. "I want to hear more of this. What do you mean by notion? You aren't thinking of leaving us?"

There is a quick commotion, a little shudder among all the animals in the background.

"Well, now--" the angel is embarrassed--"it's a hard errand I have before me, and what will be at the end of the chapter no one knows. I to be arguing with the Great Man, and demanding your rights, and He to be losing His temper with me--there 's no knowing. So to be on the safe side, I 'll just say good-by to you now. Many 's the pleasant hour we 've known and springtime coming, and many's the little day we 've spent together and winter roaring through the chilly air."

"But He never loses His temper, does he? He 's always mild."

"Oh, childer dear, ye little know! You all know the Black Man, and when you get the cold wind of his coming you scurry away. He was an angel once, the greatest of them all. Lucifer, they called him, so I 've heard old angels say, and the Hebrew or something for Him who does be bearing light, such a gorgeous angel he was. But one day he and some of his lads began to argue with the Great Man, and before the words were half out of their mouths they were tumbling through the blue spaces of the stars, condemned to eternal hell-fire. Sure, you see them yourselves on Hallowe'en, and them roaring up and down the world, and screeching fit to split the sky."

A moan of terror ran through the massed animals. The dog raised his head and howled.

"And the wee half-god we all know, him with the horns of the goat, that does the piping in the valleys of spring--sure, he was an angel once. But something went contrary on him, and now he dare n't show his face on heaven or earth, but hides in the branches as wild as a squirrel."

And a little shudder of pity arose.

"Ay, and there was others. There was a crowd of reckless fellows in the days before the flood--or after it; I don't know which--and they came from heaven to court the daughters of men, such grand women they had in those days. And the Lord God heard of it, and He stood up and looked at them, and he said just one word. They 've never been heard of since. One minute they were there, and the next was emptiness.

"Mind you, I 'm not saying anything like that will happen to me, for Himself has always been kindness to me. It's always 'How are you, Michael John?' and 'Don't you ever take a rest at all?' and 'Sometime I 'll have to take a day and come down and see yourself and the wee ones!' But just, if I don't come back, don't think I 've taken a better job. Sure, I 'd never desert you, my wee darlings. It's just maybe I 'm getting a wee bit of discipline."

"I think--" the elephant seemed husky in the throat--"your own plan might be best--to wait for an opportunity and just suggest."

"Better say nothing at all," growled the lion.

"No, childer dear; I 'd better just go ahead. I will confess it was timid of me not to go in the first place. It was thinking of my old skin I was, and I should be ashamed of myself. Sure, there 's no disgrace in asking for fair play, and you 've been sorely tried. I 'll go."

"No, no, no!" wailed the animals.

"No, your own plan was wise," the elephant insisted. "If anything happened to you, what would become of us?"

"Yes, what would become of us?" the little ones wailed.

"Do you honestly think my own plan's wiser? You 're not saying that to save me from trouble?"

"We're not," the lion said. And "Of course not," added the tiger.

"Just slip in a word when you can," from the elephant.

"Honestly, now, it would be best." The angel was relieved. "I can talk about your loyalty; and, sure, I can remind him of the kine that gave shelter to the Wee Relative in Bethlehem, and the donkey that was proud to carry His weight; and I 'll remind Him, too, that I 've never asked a favor yet, and if He could just see His way--"

"Well," the elephant thought aloud, "I 've got to be getting back to Burma."

"I 'm going your way," said the tiger.

"There 's nothing to keep me up further," said the lion.

"I 'm very much obliged to you all--" the angel was abashed with emotion--"for not insisting. And it's lucky I am," said he, "to have decent beasts to deal with and not man. For man would have insisted I 'd go, and not given a tinker's curse what would have happened me."

"Ay, man!" sneers the great white bear.

"For God's sake Philip, will you be getting home out of this, before I have you sick on my hands! And as for you, Go-by-the-Ground, get back to the river or I 'll sink my foot in your tail. Go on now! Be off with you!"

There is a _shuff-shuff-shuff_ over the sand as the beasts scatter, going east, north, west, and south. The angel stands watching them as they go. Only the horse and the dog remain, the horse nudges him on the shoulder with its mouth, the dog puts a cold nose into his hand.

"Och, my darlings!"

DELILAH, NOW IT WAS DUSK

I

Beneath her balcony, in the delicate spring night, the life of Gaza flowed gently as a calm river. Eastward the green hills of Canaan were, Delilah knew, and in imagination she could see the soft blue down of the budding corn, the clouds of flowers, the piping green of the vines, the darkness of the olive-trees. And in the west a little moon was, while as yet the sun had not gone down, a little blade of silver, like one sweet note on a flute. It made one wish to be young again, to be a child....

The lamps of Gaza were not lighted. None was eager to go within, and below there was still the jingle of camel bells, the padding of donkeys, the nervous clatter of some horse's hoofs as a desert rider sought to guide his mount in the filled streets. Languid, supercilious Egyptians strolled in the provincial ways; desert men, their eyes suspicious as hawk's, moved warily hither and thither; her own countrymen, the squat, cheerful Philistines, half townsman and half mariner, walked briskly; mysterious, aloof Phoenicians; an occasional strange seaman from Gaul, come eastward with his ship for a cargo from Asia Minor; and now came the "Hough-hough! Hough-hough!" of herdsmen, and dappled kine went by, belabored with sticks, and as she looked, Delilah saw the group of Israelites who owned them.

From the street they saw her, and their eyes blazed fury. They pointed her out to one another, with quick, wide gestures, and she could hear the gutturals of their denunciation.... Oh, yes, they remembered Samson, after twenty years! Remembered him almost as well as she!

II

She had been thinking of him only that minute, too. It was strange, but at this time, each year, his memory, his image came to her, so that she could say in winter, "On the second moon of spring there will be flowers, and an air like wine, and the Mediterranean fishers will overhaul their gear, and I shall think of Samson," and she was the only person in Philistia who could remember him clearly.

Some old magistrate perhaps, or captain of civic guard might, their memory jogged, recall the Hebrew rebel, and say: "Wasn't there a Samson once, a great red-bearded man, who was supposed to have killed a lion with his bare hands? Or perhaps I am thinking of some of the black African giants, wrestlers or circus men. I don't know. But I seem to recall the name."

And about him, among his own people, had arisen a great myth, as will arise among desert peoples and they telling stories by the fire. The old guerilla captain had become a national hero to them, and they had magnified his raids out of all proportion to reality.

And when they thought in the desert tents of the destiny of their people, and longed for the day when the then rich southwestern country would be theirs by either conquest or penetration, they said, "If Samson had lived... If Samson had n't gone wrong..."

And Delilah they cursed bitterly, even after twenty years, and they saw her not as Samson's wife, but as some strange perfumed woman who had enticed him and sold him to his enemies. Even the little children were taught to curse her. And all she had done was to adore him, and love him, and to care for and pity him when he had grown old and blind and astray in the head.

Oh well, what did it matter what they said!

Three men there had been in her life: her childhood's sweetheart in her native valley of Sorek, the slim lad who was to have married her and settled down in the valley to lead the idyllic life of country lovers. But he had gone to Egypt, and been infested with ambition, and they had grown apart and never married. And now in Egypt he was a suave administrator, very close to the Pharoah, a great man.

And there had been Samson.

And there was her present husband, small, hawk-eyed, taciturn, the greatest of the Oriental sea-captains, who knew the Mediterranean as other men knew the lake of Galilee, who had passed through the straits known to the Greeks as the pillars of Hercules, and been north to Ibernia, the land of forests and savage, hairy Celts, and bearded druid priests with sinister eyes, and to other lands where the Phoenicians had great tin mines. A quiet, efficient man, he!

To her husband she gave admiration and a fond devotion. To the boy of her youth she had given her heart in a burst of virginal music. But to the rough Hebrew rebel, a stranger to her race, in religion, in every mode of life, she had given an immensity of love....

III

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.