AMINADAB. Ay, tell us, O mightiness, have you ever spoken with Saul?

  ELIAB (scandalised). I, a foot man, speak to the king! Are you bereft, Aminadab?

  AMNON. Bereft! I have heard that word whispered in the streets of Bethlehem about Saul himself. A traveller of Hebron has brought tidings hither from the camp of a strangeness that comes upon Saul.

  ELIAB (ablaze). Brother, as you live! Those words!

  AMNON (scared). I spoke them not.

  (This is so serious that the turmoil subsides.)

  MOTHER. Nevertheless, Saul was once but a shepherd. I remember a time when there was no king in Israel.

  SHAMMAH. In the days of the Judges. No king in Israel!

  MOTHER. None before Saul — none but the Lord alone and there was no open vision of Him. The people did demand a king whom they could see, and one Samuel, a mighty prophet of the Lord, did seek out Saul in his fields in Benjamin, and grudgingly anoint him. (She says it solemnly.)

  AMINADAB. Grudgingly?

  MOTHER. SO it is said.

  (Voices get low and cautious.)

  AMNON. The man of Hebron also says there is now murmuring in the camp of a clashing between these two, Saul and Samuel.

  ELIAB. I say, you spoiler of pelts, there is none in Israel can trouble Saul and live. Would you learn how to know a king?

  AMNON. Ay, noble immensity, let us hear and be wise.

  ELIAB. When he comes nigh, though a stranger to you, your knees give way and you prostrate yourself before him.

  AMNON (irrepressible). We thank you, good Eliab. We are now prepared for the coming of a king.

  MOTHER (sternly). Impious youth!

  (The entrance door is thrown open and DAVID rushes into the room, breathless with excitement, DAVID has come down to us from the Old Testament as ‘ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to.’ Browning, in his poem ‘Saul,’ acclaims him as ‘God’s child, with dew on thy gracious gold hair.’ As we see him, he is a child beside his tall brothers. He is barelegged and should wear little save a sheepskin crosswise. His mouth opens and shuts in gasps as he tries vainly to give utterance.)

  DAVID. Mother!

  MOTHER (not lovingly, but irritated with him). David, what has befallen you?

  (He gulps.)

  DAVID (in a glorious mouthful). Mother, I have killed a lion!

  (It is so unexpected that the sons leap to weapons. Next moment the ludicrousness of the statement convulses them and they are again loud and demonstrative. Their mockery of DAVID that follows should be fast and without pauses.)

  AMNON. Our David has killed a lion! (He signs to the others to accept the news as grand.) Mother, behold the conqueror!

  (They gather round DAVID in burlesque respect, DAVID in his innocence thinks they are extolling him, and he presents a proud and beaming face. He does not notice that the mother has sunk down in shame.)

  ELIAB (grandly declamatory). Poor lion that dared to cross the path of David!

  DAVID (ravished with delight over his new popularity). There was a bear also!

  SHAMMAH (as if further astounded). Mark that! There was also a bear!

  AMINADAB. There was a bear, but there is a bear no longer.

  ELIAB. Did the bear pursue you, brother?

  (DAVID shakes his head exultantly.)

  AMNON. Keep us not in anxiety, boy. Tell us quickly that you also killed the bear, so that fear may go out of us.

  DAVID. I did kill him!

  AMNON. Mother, the bear-killer.

  (They present DAVID to her. She turns away her head.)

  ELIAB. She is in distress, David, lest the lion and the bear mauled you.

  DAVID (hastening to her to relieve her anxiety). See, mother, I have not a scratch!

  AMNON (examining him). Not a scratch! Or did you wash the blood from off you at the well?

  DAVID (it is a new idea to him). I had not thought of that.

  (The mother covers her face with her apron.)

  Eliab, shall we be called the eight sons of Jesse now?

  ELIAB. Your tale first.

  AMNON. Ay, let us sit at his feet while he tells us with seemly modesty how he became a man.

  (The brothers sit round him while he stands.)

  DAVID (gloating). A man! Amnon, when I went to the fields this morn, I was a boy. (This reflection rather scares him.)

  AMNON (as if it were a wonderful recollection). I remember you as a boy, brother. But the mighty deed?

  DAVID (seeing it with terrifying vividness). I was sitting in my cave under the rock, and lo, the sheep did eat near by.

  AMINADAB. He has now a cave, Eliab, which is almost as big as himself.

  DAVID (jealously). It is more bigger.

  AMNON (encouragingly). You were sitting in your cave playing on your harp and — ?

  DAVID (easily perplexed). Was I? I thought I was tending one of the lambs.

  AMNON (politely). Verily! Well?

  DAVID. Suddenly I heard a roar!

  ELIAB. I quake! Was it the lion or the bear?

  DAVID (trembling horribly). The lion. It was the biggest lion I have ever seen.

  AMNON. And the only one.

  DAVID (a stickler for accuracy). It was the biggest if I had ever seen more.

  MOTHER (who has been wringing her hands, isolated). Wretched boy!

  ELIAB. Fear not, mother, for at that moment David strode out of his cave and killed the lion and then the bear.

  DAVID. Didn’t I? But wait till I tell you how I did it!

  MOTHER. Cease, you lying child.

  DAVID. Lying? (He reels.) Is it all a lie?

  MOTHER. NOW is the house of Jesse brought low. I had put milk aside for you. But you shall have neither milk nor the pot.

  DAVID. O mother! (He is bewildered.)

  AMNON (signing to him to come away from her). How did you kill them, heroic one? (Confidentially.)

  DAVID (crushed, and stung by his mother). I have forgotten. I knew, but I do now forget. Perhaps I just nearly killed them.

  SHAMMAH. It was thus, David: you would have killed them if they had been there to kill.

  DAVID (catching at this straw). Wouldn’t I, Shammah?

  ELIAB. I see what happened. It was a bush of the tamarisk you killed.

  DAVID (with a sinking). Was it only a bush?

  AMINADAB. Courage, it was no bush.

  DAVID. No, it wasn’t.

  AMINADAB. It was one of our father’s sheep.

  DAVID (aghast). One of the sheep?

  ELIAB. Worse than that — it was your pet lamb.

  DAVID (in agony). My lamb?

  AMNON. It was neither a sheep nor a lamb. It was a lion.

  DAVID. Yes!

  ELIAB. But you have got the story wrong; you did not kill the lion, David. It was the lion who killed you.

  DAVID. Was that it? (Hoarsely) Am I dead, mother?

  MOTHER (rising — sternly). Shammah, to the fields to see to the sheep.

  SHAMMAH. Always Shammah — (Looking at DAVID) — while he escapes punishment.

  MOTHER. He shall not escape this time. Hasten.

  (SHAMMAH goes out at back.)

  Go from my sight, boy. Your father’s belt will deal with you when he returns.

  DAVID (imploringly). Not father’s belt.

  (She signs to him to be off.)

  (He speaks cajolingly from the door) May I have my milk, mother, after the belt?

  MOTHER. The manger for you.

  (DAVID goes out. The mother sits again.)

  Seven sons — and then this one! (She is a little broken now.)

  (They gather round her, grieving for her.)

  ELIAB (kindly). Harden not your heart against him, mother, he is but a child and cleaves to folly.

  MOTHER (scorning herself). There was a time when I thought him wonderful.

  ELIAB. So you thought of all of us when we were small.

  MOTHER. NO, only of him.

  (SHAMMAH returns hastily.)

  SHAMMAH. An old man — a stranger — is in the street asking for the house of Jesse. A hairy man girt in ragged apparel, with a wallet on his shoulder.

  ELIAB. I know them, those wanderers who now infest the camp. One of the tribe calling themselves diviners or seers.

  SHAMMAH. He looks such a one.

  AMINADAB. A mendicant!

  AMNON. Maybe a worshipper of gods fashioned by man’s hands. Yet I fear them. They have evil spirits.’Tis said they can turn their faces and walk backwards, and other things as dark. A wizard, Eliab.

  MOTHER. May all such be rent from their homes.

  ELIAB. They have been. There are no wizards now in the land. Saul has driven them all out of Israel. (Superstitious) Yet hold the door against him, Shammah.

  MOTHER (firmly). Bid him enter.

  AMINADAB. See him not. There may be mischief in his wallet.

  MOTHER. I fear no one.

  (shammah ushers in SAMUEL. He was probably the greatest of his kind save Moses, and is a striking figure in this scene and can be alarming, though his entrance is quiet and his habiliments of the poorest, mainly a mendicant’s long linen cloak of sombre colourless stuff. His feet are bare. In his hand is a long stout staff and on his shoulder a wallet. He is aged and has a beard, grey but not white, and not the long straggling beard usually given to prophets in familiar pictures. He can be straight and arresting on occasion; he is an aristocrat in the garb of a travelling priest and strikes a note of superiority to all around him. His entrance brings drama into the house. The manners of all become quieter, restrained. It is a noticeable effect of SAMUEL’s entrance.)

  SAMUEL (unostentatiously). Peace be unto this house.

  MOTHER (not much impressed by him, but civil). You seek my husband, Jesse the son of Obed?

  SAMUEL. Even so.

  MOTHER. It is his house, but he is gone to Urusalem to sell his pelts. (Thus was “Jerusalem then pronounced.)

  SAMUEL. I will await him.

  (This liberty the brothers resent but they are nervous of him. They are all seated on the floor themselves.)

  ELIAB. YOU intruder!

  MOTHER (sharply). Eliab! (Courteous but cautious) You will break bread in the house of Jesse, for is not this Bethlehem, the house of bread?

  (He inclines his head, and she puts bread before him.)

  AMNON (sarcastically). And thou wilt drink of our water if it be not forbidden to a holy man?

  (SAMUEL again inclines his head, and he drinks of a cup which AMNON in mock deference presents on bended knee.)

  SAMUEL. A son of thine?

  MOTHER. They are all sons of mine.

  AMNON. She has seven sons, O prophet.

  SAMUEL (quite politely). Thou couldst have spared one of them for a daughter. This one (meaning AMNON, as he courteously hands back the cup).

  (AMNON is discomfited, but there should never be any straining after comic effect.)

  MOTHER. If it be alms you seek, your handmaid will find a measure of barley.

  SAMUEL. It is not alms.

  AMNON. He speaks in riddles. Let us look within the wallet.

  (SAMUEL has put it down and they approach it.)

  SAMUEL (sternly). Touch not the sacred wallet.

  AMNON. Why not?

  SAMUEL. I have hacked a king in pieces for less.

  (They shrink back.)

  MOTHER. What manner of man are you? For what purpose come you to the house of Jesse?

  SAMUEL. My master sent me.

  MOTHER. Who is your master?

  SAMUEL. The master of all.

  ELIAB (impressed). Of all? Can it be, good man, that you are as I, a servant of the King?

  SAMUEL (grimly). I come not here in the service of Saul.

  ELIAB. He speaks to the hurt of the King! Go, blasphemer!

  (He throws open the door and signs for SAMUEL to go.)

  SAMUEL.! GO NOT FORTH UNTIL! HAVE DISCHARGED MY MISSION.

  (He sits and draws his staff across his knees. He is erect and formidable.)

  MOTHER. Your mission?

  SAMUEL. I was sent hither to find one of the brood of Jesse.

  MOTHER. There are three others, but they have taken wives and are no longer in Bethlehem.

  SAMUEL. Then they concern me not. I was told I should find him in this house.

  ELIAB (hopefully). And have you found him? I am the eldest.

  SAMUEL. I wait for my master to tell me.

  MOTHER. Your master is coming here?

  SAMUEL. He is here.

  (This is unexpected and startling. He rises to his feet and we see him offering up a prayer, though we do not hear the words. At first the sons are scornful. They have mostly been lolling about on the floor so far to show no respect for him; but they become impressed and gradually, not all together, but one at a time, they rise and stand reverently though bewildered, the mother included. We can see that in the prayer he seems to ask questions and to receive answers.)

  ELIAB. Now do you know which of Jesse’s brood you seek?

  SAMUEL. Now do I know that it is none of thee. (To ELIAB)

  Fair of countenance and of goodly stature, I had thought for a moment — but He has refused thee, for man looketh on the outward appearance, but He looketh on the heart, and thou art not the man. (To AMINADAB and SHAMMAH) Also art thou refused — and thou. (To AMNON) Nor hath He chosen thee, poor afflicted one.

  MOTHER. Then your mission —

  SAMUEL. I await the sign.

  MOTHER. The sign?

  DAVID (suddenly peering in from the door). Mother, can I have my milk now?

  SAMUEL (intentionally not looking round). Who spoke?

  MOTHER. Truly I have an eighth son, but he is a child and in a great trespass.

  SAMUEL. Let him be brought before me.

  ELIAB (concealing him). He is in the fields tending his father’s flocks.

  SAMUEL (still as if unaware of DAVID’S presence). I came hither through the fields which they said were Jesse’s, and there was none tending the flock.

  AMNON (mimicking SAMUEL). Sawest thou, far-seeing one, aught in the fields but sheep and goats?

  SAMUEL (who is again seated). Lo, I saw a strange sight. I saw a dead lion.

  (This makes a sensation.)

  ELIAB (unbelieving). How now?

  (The brothers look at each other, aminadab runs out, obviously to make sure for himself, leaving the door open.)

  DAVID (emerging into full view of SAMUEL). Was THERE a bear also?

  SAMUEL (still not looking at him). Near the lion there lay a dead bear.

  DAVID. Eliab! Amnon!

  AMNON. They must have killed one another.

  DAVID (hotly). No, they didn’t.

  (SHAMMAH runs out.)

  ELIAB. They were snared or shot.

  DAVID. No!

  SAMUEL. There was no mark of a weapon upon them. Their necks were broken.

  DAVID (gloriously). David did it!

  (eliab and AMNON gape at him and run out after the others, closing the door, DAVID goes up to SAMUEL, who is not looking at him, pulls his cloak, and speaks shyly.) I am David.

  (SAMUEL at last turns, puts a hand on him, and looks long and seriously at him.)

  Do you think you could get my mother to give me my milk as I am he who killed the lion and the bear?

  SAMUEL (authoritatively). His milk.

  (She signs reluctantly to DAVID, and he runs off gaily to get his milk.)

  Now, wife of Jesse, leave me with thy eighth son.

  MOTHER (perplexed and incredulous). Is David THE ONE whom you seek?

  SAMUEL. I know not yet, but I think he may be that one.

  MOTHER. The sign?

  SAMUEL. David will give it to me.