FullReads

“Love is strong as death.”

She repeats the line again and again. Oh my Israel, is the grave the limit of thy love? Wert thou dead, fair boy, Egypt would inclose thy sacred ashes in a golden urn and wear it ever between her breasts–would make for thee a living sepulcher and thou shouldst sleep in the vale of Love, between the rosy mountains of Desire. Wert thou dead–

The slaves! They will tell their master the wild words she spoke against her love–against his life. She must seal their lips, must command their silence. Too late! Even as she lays her hand on the silver bell the heavy tread of her husband’s brass-shod feet is heard in the long hall, ringing upon the bare stone floor in rapid, nervous rhythm, so different from the usual majestic tread of Pharaoh’s chief slaughterman. The slaves have already spoken! A faintness as of death falls upon her; but she is a true daughter of false Egypt, and a wiser than Potiphar would find in her face no shadow of the fear that lies heavy on her heart. The game is called and she must play not for name and fame, but for love and life. Her husband confronts her, ferocity incarnate,–the great cord-like veins of the broad, low brow and massive neck knotted and black, his eyes blazing like the orbs of an angry lion seen by the flickering light of a shepherd’s fire. He essays to speak, but his tongue is thick, his lips parched as one stricken with the plague, and instead of words there comes through his set teeth a hoarse, hissing sound as of the great rock serpent in its wrath. His glance falls upon Joseph’s garment, the gleaming sword leaps from its sheath and he turns to seek the slave. She lays her hand lightly upon his arm, great Egypt’s shield, a pillar of living brass; she nestles in the grizzly beard like some bright flower in a weird forest; she kisses the bronzed cheek as Judas did that of our dear Lord and soothes him with pretty truths that are wholly lies.

Joseph is a good boy, but sometimes overbold. Poor child! Perhaps her beauty charmed away his senses and made him forget his duty. She bade him sing to beguile a tedious hour, and he sang of love and looked at her with such a world of worship in his eyes that she grew angry and upbraided him. Let it pass; for, by the mystic mark of Apis, she frightened the boy out of his foolish fever.

She laughs gleefully, and the gruff old soldier suffers her to take his sword, growling meanwhile that he likes not these alarms–that she has marshaled Egypt’s powers to battle with a mirage. The game is won; but guilt will never rest content, and oft reveals itself by much concealment. It is passing strange, she tells him tearfully, that every male who looks upon her, whether gray-headed grand-sire or beardless boy, seems smitten with love’s madness. She knows not why ’tis so. If there is in her conduct aught to challenge controversy she prays that he will tell her. The old captain’s brow again grows black. He leads her where the fading light falls upon her face, and, looking down into her eyes as tho’ searching out the secrets of her soul, bids her mark well his words. The wife who bears herself becomingly never hears the tempter’s tone or knows aught of any love but that of her rightful lord. Pure womanhood is a wondrous shield, more potent far than swords. If she has been approached by lawless libertine, he bids her, for the honor of his house, to set a seal upon her lips, instead of bruiting her shame abroad as women are wont to do whose vanity outruns their judgment.