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.