Mary: The Queen of the House of David and Mother of Jesus / The Story of Her Life

CHAPTER XV.
THE REVELS OF MEN AND RITES OF THEIR GODDESSES.

Passing from Edrei toward Bozrah the pilgrim knight and his wife with their convoy reached Kunawat, the Kenath of Scripture, once the dwelling place of Job. Here for a time they abode. The number and variety of castles, temples, theaters and palaces in ruins, were sufficient to engage the attention of the travelers for many days. Rizpah was more cheerful than she was at Edrei, but yet restless to reach Bozrah, on which place her heart was set.

One day standing before an old Roman temple in Kunawat, Rizpah, somewhat interested by its well preserved Corinthian columns, and Sir Charleroy deeply engrossed in contemplation of an huge stone image, the former asks: “Has the knight recognized an old English or a new Bashan love?” The woman was finding the oft-repeated and prolonged visits to this particular place monotonous. She was annoyed, but modified her rebuke into raillery.

“There is something very fascinating in the Cyclopean face.”

“A broken stone fascinate a man? But I see ’tis that of a woman; the brain part gone. Would that the English knight had wed such; then he might have been loyal to creed, and not a martyr!”

“Rizpah knows that I could never have loved a brainless face, nor any one akin to this Kunawat goddess.”

“Not if she echoed thy ‘aye’ and ‘nay’ consistently? Be careful; as many strong men have fallen by having their conceit gratified as there have fallen women through flattery.”

“How absurd to hint that I could be so lured.”

“But the knight says Astarte fascinates!”

“I said so, meaning that I’m fascinated by the train of thoughts that the image awakens. Think a moment; we, the living of to-day confronting the acme of the thought of the ages long gone. Looking at this, I seem to be seeing over rolling centuries, right into the hearts of humanity that lived thousands of years ago.”

“All this might have been taken in at a glance! Having seen it, what use is it?”

“Use? To aid in finding a key to life’s problems. I’m filled with questionings; do not yearnings, such as beat through the being of the ancients pulse in those of to-day? Are not humanity’s temptations and needs ever the same?”

“Since the ancients did not tarry to compare with us, I, being only a woman, of Gerash, of to-day, can give only the shallow answer, I suppose so.”

“Oh, I’m not questioning Rizpah; but the ruins, the air, time, my soul, God!”

“And their reply?”

“Bewildering echoes of each question?

“And it’s all a mystery to Sir Charleroy?”

“I know a little; something, next to nothing.”

“Possess curious me of that little, and I’ll help thee wonder why so much greatness came to naught.”

“That wondering is easily met; they had, as god, one whose head could be broken as this one’s was; they that would survive must be sheltered by the Invincible.”

Rizpah, meanwhile had drawn close to the huge stone face and placing one hand beneath the mouth, the other on the portion of the head just above the moon crown, her arms stretched well nigh to their limits quizically remarked:

“Those that dined with her must have had pyramids for chairs. What dost thou think they were like?”

“Crusaders?”

“Now, I’m tantalized. Crusaders two or three thousand years ago? How absurd!”

“Oh, certainly they were not known by the name, Crusaders: but they that followed Astarte and such-like deities, whether called Kenaihites, Rephaim, Moslem, Christians, or by other appellation are all soldier-pilgrims, dominated by an ideal. There have been many female deities among the pagans and there is a deal of paganism left in humanity.”

“That’s because half the race are men. Astarte would be very popular to-day with thy sex, if she were here in living form, a whole woman, instead of a fragment and beautiful also—”

“Thou dost not care to hear more of the female deities?”

“Oh, yes; I’ll be fearfully jealous if thou dost keep any thing back. Tell me what madmen the ancients were?” She paused, slapped the face of the image, ejaculating “Virago!” then continued, “Why did they make their effigy both hideous and huge? Ugly things should be dwarfed!”

“The ancients, who knew not the grandeur of moral power, gave their deities terribleness in their physical proportions, and a mountain of flesh became their ideal of greatness—men ever try to make their objects of worship greater than themselves, thou knowest. Hast forgotten what Ichabod once told us of the Egyptians? How they expressed their reverence by piling up pyramids and made that very diminutive which they would caricature? Oh, how our true religion, having at its heart an only, all-beautiful, Almighty God, rises above these human devices!”

“I wonder that it did not, at its first appearing on earth, instantly overthrow all others.”

“And it is a still more wonderful thing that those who embraced it, having known, should have sometimes gone back to paganism? Thou dost remember that God’s chosen people, after enjoying marvels of His Providence, plunged headlong into idolatry in the very presence of His splendor at Sinai?”

“With shame I remember it. I marvel as well that this record, which evokes the ridicule of the grosser heathen, was made part of our Holy writings.”

“God’s compensation! The people stripped themselves of their jewels to make the calf; then of their garments to worship it according to the lewd rites of Apis. God since has lashed them naked around the world, as it were, by giving their history to all times. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out,’ is a stern truth haunting the conscience of the evil doer; but though exposure is a bitter medicine it is a saving one. God as such applies it.”

“I think the devil crazed the people at Sinai.”

“Yes, Rizpah, but Human Desire was his name. The revelers made their devil as well as their calf, that day.”

“But it is said ‘they rose to play.’ If so disobedient and heaven-defying how could they have found heart to play?”

“Odious, significant word that one is, here. It was a ‘play’ that engulphed all purity. No wonder they ceased to observe the ‘burning mountain!’ Only the pure in heart can see God.”

“Thank God! that thy people and mine have finally escaped, my husband.”

“So far as we have escaped, I thank Him; but, alas, the evangels of Egypt’s scarlet heresies still go about, and there are many, everywhere, led away in chains that seem of flowers at first, but are found to be of galling iron at last.”

“I did not know this?”

“Oh, these modern perverters disguise their horrible tenets with many refined phrases; yet He that overwhelmed gross Sodom and the jewelless, naked dancers about the golden bull, sees through all their thin drapings and will judge the free lover, corrupt socialist and libertine as He did those ancients. The Assyrian and Egyptian representations of Venus generally appeared holding a serpent; a sort of bitter admission of the curse in the hand of perverted love and the fierce lashings that follow it.”

“I fail to connect the ancient with the present heresies, my good teacher.”

“I pause to-day here, reminded of their common origin and consequences. God put it into the hearts of His creatures to love women, honor motherhood, and worship Him. Read Sinai’s law, and this is all manifest. There came a perversion; the love of woman was degraded, motherhood was denied its honor, and men became God-defying. There was a confusion worse than that of Babel, and the worshiping was transferred, first, to symbolized lust; then degraded. They that adored Venus, knowing how her adoration had depraved themselves, came to believe that she scandalized the heaven they imagined. Then came a time when her earthly rites even scandalized the wiser pagans.”

“My husband leads me along strange ways. Is it wise to do so?”

“I see a grand end; follow me. There is a deep significance in the fact that among the pagans there constantly appeared this adoration of woman on account of her power of motherhood. I take this adoration as proof of a conscious need feeling after a vaguely discerned truth. The yearning is suggested by the paired gods. Assyria had its Beltis, consort of Bel-nimrud; and there were Allelta of the Arabians, the many-breasted Diana of the Ephesians, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, Ceres and Venus of Rome, this Astarte of the Giants; beyond all, in utter odiousness Khem, the Phallic god of Egypt. Amid all these false ideals, the divine home with its pure love and our immortality by grace’s mystery, were overslaughed in human thought. The glaring passions, that were unwilling to believe in other immortality than that that comes through posterity, other heaven than that of sensuous pleasure, fascinated and dominated hearts and souls.”

“And worshiping women-gods did this.”

“Worshiping beings with the form of women did it! Reverence for true womanhood ever exalts and never degrades. But these ancients adored very gorgons with snakes for hair, and having tearing, brazen claws. They set these gorgons with the Harpies, in their mythologies, at the gates of dark Pluto’s palace. Alas, where men are led by ill-flavored women, is ever more Pluto’s gateway.”

“The up-digging of these ancient soils, knight, give forth foul odors. Did they not dread a just and jealous God?”

“No. It is the constant voice of history that false belief concerning these things of which I have spoken, brings both blindness and degradation. Unbelief comes swiftly in the wake of impurity. The gorgons had but one eye and that had the malign power of turning to stone all upon whom its glance fell. When men deify a fallen woman then look for a cataclysm of evils. Rizpah has seen little of the world, but this in time she’ll find true; the man whose cult or faith bends toward the libidinous is on the way to utter atheism. So these old-time free-lovers, like those of to-day, push out of the universe in their belief, the Great, Beautiful, First Cause. The pure in heart see God; the impure can not even pray to Him. The latter must be aided by an Immaculate One. They make a gulf betwixt their souls and heaven, which Great Mercy alone can bridge.”

“Ah, knight, I’d dread a return of those gross idolatries, knowing mankind’s trend, but that I knew that Shiloh was to come as a Reformer.” The knight caught at the words of his wife to lead her toward his own dear belief.

“If He came to Rizpah in the form of a man, unique because of his virgin purity, unlike any other in being all unselfish, and accompanied by a peerless woman, exemplifying all that is best in the gentle sex; between Himself and that woman a love deep to love’s last depth, pure as a sunbeam, enduring as eternity itself, would Rizpah welcome Him!”

“That would be a wondrous coming; but I’d welcome Him.”

“Does Rizpah believe such an appearing desirable?”

“Oh, on my soul, yes! If he should so come, methinks the rites which have gone on in the secrecy of the groves, under the uncertain light of the moon, would be driven from the earth, and men come to worship God, taking that man for the ideal of manhood, that woman as woman’s pattern.”

“Dost thou see that stone with eight lines crossing, lying just there by the image of Astarte?”

“I see it and the lines; but what of them?”

“In the far East, the land of the Fire Worshipers, on almost all the handiwork of man that symbol is placed. It is to represent an eight-pointed star, the Assyrian sign of immortality.”

“Eight lines crossing to represent immortal life? This is inane!”

“Not quite. I had its explanation from my wandering Jew, Ichabod, learned by much travel in the lore of many peoples. He thus interpreted the symbol as the Assyrians understood it; man, a four-pointed star; his four radiate limbs suggesting that likeness. Thou knowest that the Israelites have been wont to call men stars? The Assyrians, not having the sure word, were led to seek by human philosophy a theory of immortality, and they got no further than twice four, two human beings in union; so eight or a double star, their symbol of marriage, represented the only immortality they were able to find; that that comes from reproduction. At least that was the only reality, the rest being very vaguely believed, and believed only because they thought that the mystery of a new life coming forth, was a hint of a spiritual method analogous to the material. They then fell to worshiping the sun, the great fructifier and light of nature; fire, the essence of passion, became their highest god. It is said that those Magi of the East, that arrived long ago at Bethlehem, were fire worshipers, and that in answer to a cry for light, constantly uttered by their race, they took their journey to Judah, seeking it.”

“The world must turn to Israel ever for the truth, Sir Charleroy.”

“For some truth; not all; but there is a tradition that the star the wise men followed was a double one, two planets in conjunction. There is a fitness in the legend, for the seekers of light were brought to the cave where lay a mother and babe; the latter God’s finest presentment of immortality, the Incarnation; the fruit of the Divine in union with the human. I stand overcome with wonder and reverence when I remember that they of the East had some light from the Jews they held captive ages before. They lost most of what they had, then, longing for its return, God answered their prayer by taking them to the finest of schools, a blessed home circle. Behold all the East looking for light at Bethlehem!”

Rizpah evaded her husband’s graceful attempt to impress on her Christian tenets, by replying: “I prefer the Jewish choice number Seven, though I can not give it fine interpretations, as thou to the Eight of the East.”

“Rizpah prefers it because it is Jewish, and I prefer Seven because I read therein a covenant; for Seven is the sacred covenant number of God’s Word. Let me interpret: There is a Triune God, symbolized by Three; then man, the child of chance, the being tossed hither and thither by the four winds, a complex union himself of body, mind, animal life and immortal spirit. Four is his representative number, or symbol. The Assyrians paired fours; the Jews vaguely discerned a grander path to eternal felicity through the conjunction of God and man, the Three and the Four. From this they derived their covenant number, Seven.”

“These are charming explanations, Sir Charleroy; especially so, if sure ones!”

“But the truths are fairer than my poor words. I read that at creation the morning stars—meaning the beings that know no night, the very sons of God—shouted for joy! They saw an immortality having its springs in the being of the Eternal, and were glad. Since then the race has diverged into two lines. The gross and unbelieving, seeking to effect the apotheosis of human lust, have gone their ways reveling under the moonlight, and building their fanes in the groves which fade, while the believing and God-taught have walked in a covenant toward Him, ‘Who only hath immortality dwelling in light.’ Rizpah, some day that home group at Bethlehem, a father, mother, and child, surrounded by angels, overshadowed by God, will come to be thought the finest ideal of this life. Yea, a picture of Heaven itself!”

The knight’s wife fixed her piercing, dark eyes on his, there were expressed in her countenance admiration and fearfulness. She was charmed by his lofty sentiments, yet apprehensive of being led into some dangerous, Christian heresy. Fanaticism always has a terror of heresy, so-called, even though it seemed to be full of white truth. Presently she questioned:

“So Og, great as a mountain of flesh, and Astarte, goddess of the pleasure that kills, only, of all Kunawat’s ancients, have left enduring names?”

“One other name endures, the ages brightening its luster—Job, loyal to the last, in spite of the devil and a virago wife.”

“Poor woman! say I of Job’s wife. None have told her side of her family troubles. May be Job haunted the grove of the moon-crowned?”

“May be? Never! His splendid orations bespoke a man walking nigh Jehovah. Listen: ‘If I beheld the moon walking in brightness, if my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth kissed my hand, let thistles grow instead of wheat.’ He said this amid the votaries of the Lust-Queen.”

“And Job may be praised, not only as proof that there has been one patient man on earth, but as proof that a good man will stand pure to the last, though the world about acclaim the praise of delightful sins?”

“He stood because entranced by his beautiful ideal. He loved Him whose name is Holiness.”

“Heaven comes at last to such.”

“Job was God’s best friend on earth in his day, and his Heavenly Father gave him as his reward His best earthly gift—a new, pure, happy, fruitful home.”

“Are we through now with the fascinating image, knight?”

“Yes, Rizpah, if we take to heart its warnings. May we preserve our integrity, and have a home as our reward finer than that of the Man of Uz; yea, verily, as fine in its tempers and virtues as that of Bethlehem.”

So saying, the knight led Rizpah toward their abode.

CHAPTER XVI.
A BATTLE OF GIANTS AT BOZRAH.

Sir Charleroy and his consort took up their abode in one of the many deserted ancient stone houses of the city of Bozrah. The latter, situated in one of the most fertile plains of earth, once having upward of one hundred thousand inhabitants, several times having risen to metropolitan splendor, ages ago sank into neglect, decay and desolation. But with wonderful persistence that city preserves the records, or relics, of what it was in better, greater days. The antiquarian to-day finds in and around Bozrah the dwellings, palaces and temples of many and various peoples, some piled in strata-like courses, one above the other, each layer the tombstone of its predecessor; some as fine as they were forty centuries ago. The annalist there has at hand as an open book the achievements of some of the mightiest men of earth, physically. The latter were contemporary with that line of God’s moral giants, of which Abraham, Moses and David were representative leaders first, and Christ finally. The strata of Bozrah tell of differing policies, politics, religions; all alike in one thing—the attempt to build upon the buttresses of giant force; but they present in the end the one result—failure; all being equally dead at the last, if not equally herculean at the first. Sheer robustness in the armies of Rome, the Turk, Alexander, and Og wrought out their best about the Bashan cities, and in that theater played the eternally losing game of all such. It seems as if God had chosen that part of all the world to illustrate this great lesson of His providence. The Roman, Mohammedan, Greek, and others like them, there had their brutal and sensuous existence. There the Crusader carried also his banners; but the end of the Rephaim was the forerunner and prophecy of all the other giantesque gatherings that followed after them. Each passing race and dynasty left its monuments and tokens of possession; but of all, those of the first, the giants, are the most enduring, most wonderful. These dateless, huge, rugged, fort-like dwellings, standing just as they did four thousand years ago, except that they are mostly unoccupied, are impressive monuments and reminders of the mighty denizens who once abode within them. There are ruins of temples, palaces, houses of commerce and places of amusement, but chiefly of homes; the latter, significantly, instructively, being the best preserved of all. Sir Charleroy observed this circumstance, and casually remarked to Rizpah, as they bestowed their effects in one of the ancient domiciles:

“If ever I take to building, I’ll build abiding places for people, only. Such are the most lasting.”

But while he came thus near to a royal truth, he did not make it his own. It passed through his mind and he felt its light, as one might that from the wing of a ministering spirit, while his eyes were holden and his back turned. He immediately left the angelic thought, to go wandering through years of misery, before coming back face to face with it again. Sir Charleroy and Rizpah, a western soldier and a woman of Israel, two giants in their way, began a new career at Bozrah. It was providential. Measuring power by the only available test at hand, namely, what it accomplishes, it was manifest long ago to all that the brawn of the Cyclops was not the master force of the word. Hercules cleansed the earth of mythical, not real evils. Sir Charleroy and Rizpah are fittingly brought to the theater of the giants for the purpose of testing the potency of giantesque sentimentality and stubborn, mighty ardor. To this end, two will do as well as a nation, and a decade will be as conclusive as a score of generations. The husband and wife entered Bozrah gladly, and quickly adapted themselves to their new surroundings. They were both very impressible, and there were many things in their new environments that impressed and stimulated them. Nature’s face and locations may be changed by man, but he can not change her heart. She, on the other hand, is invincible in her conquests of both his face and inner being. Climate and environments determine the characters and careers of the majorities. The sleets of the North, in time, will goad the sensuous Turk or Hottentot to high activity, while the Cossack or Esquimaux, under tropical suns soon fall into luxuriousness and laziness. Bozrah began its molding of the knight and his wife. Rizpah and Sir Charleroy were at first attracted to Giant Land by the hugeness of its monuments and ghostly greatness of its record. They received at Bozrah their first impulse to settle and make a home. Probably they were largely influenced by the conviction that, in its way, there was nothing more entrancing or majestic beyond. For the best results to them, the second selection was altogether unfortunate. They had made their home in the midst of battle-fields, and the atmosphere that hung over all things was like that over a defeated army, sullenly submitting. The new comers from the beginning, in their new home, were immersed in ghostly memories, and that atmosphere so like the breath of a bound yet struggling giant. They were affected more than they realized by all these things.

“No more tours, no more worlds, for us to conquer!” exclaimed the knight.

Rizpah, her cheerfulness of mind largely recovered, replied to this remark of Sir Charleroy with a bantering laugh, at the same time pointing upward. Quickly, and with retort cruel as a giant’s javelin, he cried:

“Alas, so soon Rizpah seeks my final departure from her!”

The cavalier was no more; it was the brusque and gross within him that spoke. Had he been courtly, even without being Christian, he would have been considerate enough not to have cruelly jested concerning that which lay in his wife’s heart as a possible and sad fact. Often the thought of eternal separation from her husband, even from eternal hope, haunted her now. Her husband knew this.

For a moment his answer seemed to stun her; then the affectations of pouting on her mobile face, coming when she pointed upward, changed into lines of anger. A hot flush mounting up to the roots of her hair, hung out the warning signal.

The knight, pretending not to observe the change, twined his arms about his wife and mockingly sighed:

“Poor girl! I can find no wings on thee. I once thought thou hadst such. They must have dropped off.”

There was no reply. He then began to retreat, to placate, and to that intent drew her closer and closer to his heart, until, embracing her, his hands clasped; but, for the first time since the event near Gerash, when the Arabs were vanquished, his caress was without response. He tried a thrust thus:

“Well, beloved, since thou dost banish me, bestow a kiss of long farewell.”

Quickly, Rizpah flung aside his embracing arms and cried: “Shechemite! I’m no Dinah, won by false professions!”

“Shechem was more honorable than all the house of his father,” quoted the knight in reply.

“He loved himself, his passions; to these gods he gave up with all devotion, and they immolated him. That was good!”

“Why, Rizpah, thou art pettish.”

“‘Rizpah!’ Thou art adroit in using bitter similes; a brutalizing power, when brutally used! Now, call me ‘Jarnsaxa.’ Thou toldst me, yesterday, how that mighty male god of the Norse, Thor, while hating her people, to the death, stole Jarnsaxa. Yea, and how many giants fell for women. Perhaps thou didst want me to pity thee. We are in Giant Land now, and thou canst begin to play Colossus!”

The knight was startled, and quickly entreated: “My queen, lets drop the masks; no more of this; forget my sarcasm, and I’ll forgive the recriminations. A truce and pardon, in the name of love. What says Esther?”

“‘Esther?’ Thou calledst me that when cavalier, turning lover. Thou art neither now!” The sentence ended in a petulant sob.

“Oh, stay now. It was playfulness. I—there, now! Canst thou not brook a little playfulness from me?”

“Playfulness? Bah! Ye men play so like lions, forgetting to keep the claws cushioned! But, now thou hadst better be going, saint—the only one here. Go, now, right along to heaven. They want thee there. They want thee, not me.” Then she choked back another sob, but instantly thereafter, dashing the rising tear from her eyes, she bitterly exclaimed: “At any rate, thou’lt have company!”

“Whom, pray?”

“The begetter and chief of all restless vagabonds!”

“So; I never heard of him. Has he a name, my dear?”

The knight was sarcastic, because he was nettled.

Rizpah’s eyes glittered with the fire of offended pride, and she quickly began in measured tone, as if in soliloquy, and alone, to quote Job’s record of satan’s joining the assembly of the sons of God:

“There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and satan came also. And the Lord said whence camest thou? Then satan said from going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.”

“My wife responds to my penitence with bitterness; but even the pagans were wiser. They ever took the gall from the animals offered to Juno, goddess of wedlock.”

“Thy wife promised to be thy helpmate and give thee all she had. Now, just forget thy fine paganism, being a Christian long enough to remember that I’m thy helpmate in all things, even in bitterness. I give thee all, even returning thy giving.”

“Thou shouldst not make so much of my little misstep.”

“Nothing is little with which one must constantly live. Great breaks grow from little fractures. One may stand a blow, but its the constant fretting that roughs the heart-strings to woe unendurable. Thou hast a habit of playfully hurting.”

“Well, this has been a day at school; there ought to be a school for husbands! We do not half understand the fine, sensitive creatures that companion us.”

“Oh, thou thoughtst thou wert a woman-reader!”

“Were I to see an angel with a body like a harp, eyes like the unsearchable ocean, heart of flame, arms like flowering vines, covered with prismatic wings, I’d be no more puzzled and abashed than I am now by my high-strung, fine-tempered Rizpah.”

“Puzzled! abashed! I’d help thee pity thy wounded conceit, but that I know that thou art soon to ascend. Art thou going now!”

“I’m afraid not, since I’ve so many more sins than graces. When elephants soar with butterfly wings, thou mayst look for my departure. Till then I’ll stay here and practice the patience of Job, beset with his rambling devil.”

“How elegantly the cavalier uses simile in coining epithets.”

“Heavens! Rizpah, thou dost twist my meanings! Why distort, instead of pardoning my blunders, making both of us miserable!”

“Oh, then, thou hast grace enough not to liken me to thy besetting, evil spirit, at least in words?”

“No, no, ’tis refined cruelty to put me on the defense as to that. Believe it or not, Rizpah of Gerash and Rizpah of Bozrah are the same. My heart to its core says so!”

This second quarrel, that should not have been begun, had the merit of ending, as it should, in reconciliation, tears, embraces and a great many excellent pledges. Yet Sir Charleroy did not greatly profit by the experience. He failed to perceive that these first breaks in the rhythmic flow of conjugal love are great shocks to a deeply affectionate woman. He knew that men easily recover from rebuffs, and so did not stop to consider that young wife-hood was the highest expression on earth of utter clinging to one sole support. He knew his own feelings and took them for the standard. He set himself up as the pattern, quite unconsciously, perhaps; and after the conflict in which he came off conceded victor, he was condescending in his manner. This was unfortunate. Rizpah did not need to be told that her husband was wiser and stronger willed and more self-possessed and more able to endure life’s trial than herself. All this she believed, absolutely, when she surrendered her heart to the man at the first. Woman-like, these were the very circumstances that caused her to love him as she did. A woman never loves completely until her love is supplemented by adoration. She must believe the man, who would make full conquest, is one to whom she can look up; one some way her superior. But while a loving woman will give a devotion almost religious, she will be pained amid her delights of committal by a haunting fear that he whom she adores may rise away from her. In the very plenitude of her fullest love-worship she will deny the reverence, sometimes, in a seeming inconsistency, rebuff and even ridicule her idol. It is with her a sort of hysteria, a confession of secret terror, lest she and he grow apart in mind, and so come to part in body. Hence it is a giant cruelty on the part of a husband, sometimes, to enforce, or thrust forward, his size or his lordship. They may be facts, but God has set over against them as their equal that love which clings, stimulates and supplements, without which the finest man is far less than the half of the united twain. Sir Charleroy blundered along in his error; Rizpah tried to be happy and failed. She did not know how to make the best of her surroundings, and Sir Charleroy did not know, because he did not seek religiously to find out how to help her make the best of them. They had some periods of pleasure, but they continually grew briefer and were more frequently interrupted as time went on. She was ill, he suffered himself to think her at times ill-tempered. As a lover, he admired her outbreaks as very brilliant, and flattered her by remarking that she had the metal of an Arabian steed; as a husband, he thought her very disagreeable when pettish or angry. Indeed, though he never said so to her, he did say to himself that at times she was very like a virago. The only steed that came to his mind then was the ass, to which he likened himself when he considered himself the perfection of submissive patience.

A new event radically changed the picture and situation in this troubled home.

The prayer of prayers was heard in Bozrah; the cry of a baby; a bundle of needs and helplessness, with no language but a cry. Processions of silent centuries had passed through those halls since they echoed the hoarse voices of the brawny beings who built them. One could not hear the infant cry without remembering the contrasts. A baby; a puny one at that, and of the gentler sex, besides being of a race pigmy compared to the stalwarts who builded those abodes. Sir Charleroy and his consort had set up their household gods, and for a goodly period had occupied as theirs a Rephaim home.

The little stranger came, though they did not discern it, with power to bless them both. A poetic visitor, happening on this baby’s hammock there and then, might have gone in raptures, to some truths, after this fashion: “It will be the golden tie, angel of peace and hope, to the home!” The philosopher, seeing the little bundle of helplessness, might have said: “Here is a giant, the home is immortal through its offspring; the babe requiring so much, richly repays its loving care-takers by inducting them into the soul expansions of unselfish service.” But then poets and philosophers often miss the mark, attempting prophesy.

The parents followed the usual course of those for the first time in that relation. Their love for each other, very intense, and by its sensitiveness witnessing after all that it was very selfish, got a new direction. They soon drifted into the charming fooleries of their like. Sometimes they petted the child unceasingly, and one was anon jealous of the other if surpassed in this. They each struggled for a recognition from the innocent, and debated as to whether the first babble of the little one was “mamma” or “papa.” Then there were times when they handled baby very reverently, as if it were something from God, or likely to break.

At such times they each, in heart, thanked God and gave the child, at least in part, to Him. Sometimes they called it “Davidah” or “darling,” and laughed as they assured each other, to assure themselves, that the baby looked wise as if understanding. Sometimes they played with it as if they were children and it a toy; sometimes they ministered to it with anxious care, while all the time they felt quite sure it was somehow of finer mold and fiber than any babe before on earth. They were just like all for the first time parents, and their raptures were now for good, being centered around the thought expressed by the sweet word home. Of course, the question of naming the child was discussed, and, of course, no name they could think of seemed quite good enough. Some days the child was given a dozen, and some days it had none; for all the time they kept trying to fit it.

In one thing, both parents were Jewish, namely, the desire to give their darling an appellation expressive of what it was or what they hoped it would be. They first agreed on “Angela,” but that was discarded as being a sort of advertisement of the quality of their treasure. In the constant selfishness of love they would keep it all secretly, sacredly to themselves, they said. They sought for many days some significant token or name that should be fully expressive of their thought, and yet by the three only be ever fully understood. One day Rizpah, always abrupt, still nursing an old superstition, said: “Call her Marah, a mournful, sweet, expressive title.”

“Why, wife, that means ‘bitterness.’”

“Bitterness, since I believe that somewhere, somehow, there is bitterness enough in store for her—and me with her.”

“I’d prefer ‘Mary,’ my wife; surely this little angel is to be all like that blessed one.”

Then there was more strife, but of a rather patient kind, which ended in a compromise, they calling the child Miriamne, each in mind meaning different from the other; the one Marah, the other Mary. But on the heels of this came soon the graver problem, How should the babe be reared, in Jewish faith or Christian? It was the old, old story of a difficulty seemingly easily adjusted to all, except to those who have actually met it, and in this case, as usual, the two parties fanatically opposed each other. In the name of sweet religion they loyally served the devil for a time. The highest achievement of a creed or faith is the soothing and elevation of a home here, or the exalting of it heavenward for hereafter. That is a travesty of piety which wrecks the substance of joy for the shell of a dogma. This stricture is easily written and may pass without dissent, the reader immediately falling into the error denounced. Of course, as usual, these two parents began the discussion of the subject. At intervals they cautiously pressed their arguments, but each unwaveringly moved toward his or her point. They were like advancing armies, firing occasional shots, but surely approaching a mighty issue. They pretended to argue the matter by times, but it was a farce, for each in mind irrevocably had predetermined the conclusion. Time sped on a year or more, then the conflict fully came.

“Rizpah, we were wed by a Christian, let us take the fruit of that compact to Christian baptism.”

“The first act was an error; we shall not atone for it by repetitions in kind! The child is mine; I decline.”

“And mine, so I request.”

“A mother imperils her whole life for her child, and unreservedly gives to it part of herself; justice, humanity, should give the child to the mother, so far as may be.”

“But even under thy faith, I, the father, am the head of the house.”

“Under my faith the nurture and training of children belong chiefly to the mother, and my faith has been the finest society-builder of the world in the past. Thou hast often recounted to me the deeds of that golden, heroic time of my people, when the great Maccabean family led us and inspired us. Well, then, the mothers had exclusive control of the daughters until they were wed, and so they had grand daughters among the Maccabees.”

“Well, we differ in belief; we had better compromise.”

“We dare not barter a little soul to do it.”

“Well, briefly then, being lord of this home, I command that the grace-giving sacrament be sought for our Mary.”

“My faith, to which thou didst first appeal, forbids fathers to command their children to walk through idolatrous fires. Marah shall not.”

“Hush; I only want the loved one inducted into the true faith.”

“Mine is the older and truer.”

“With thee argument is futile; I insist——”

“If the father is a foreigner, Jewry’s rule is that the children are to be called by the mother’s name and regarded as of her family. Make such law as thou choosest for thy family but not for mine.”

“I’ll end this,” cried Sir Charleroy, seizing the child, as if to hasten then to seek some priest’s ministry.

Rizpah’s eyes glittered with sullen purpose. She sprang before him, and hissed:

“Our fathers escaped at all cost from Egypt. I’ll not go back, nor Marah.”

The knight was surprised, and his looks expressed it as he said:

“Dost thou rave?”

“Oh, no, I was just remembering that a bearded serpent was the Egyptian symbol of deity; something like a man. You Christians would have all husbands gods to their families! No bearded serpent for mine!”

“Heavens, woman! thinkest thou thy scorn and vituperation can stay me?” So saying he pushed, or rather half flung the woman from him. He had no conception of the rage that any thing like a blow evokes in the heart of a woman that could love as once did Rizpah. On his part it was intended as a masterpiece of strategy, in the hope that the woman would swoon, then surrender in the weakness of following hysteria. The act was hateful to him, but he justified it by the end sought, yet missed that end.

Rizpah was a tigress roused, and like many another mother, beast or human, when the fight is once for offspring was endowed with sudden, supernatural strength. She sprang toward the hammock, plucking her dagger meanwhile from its hiding-place.

“Heaven defend us, woman!” cried Sir Charleroy, glancing about for a means of prevention, “thou wouldst not do murder?”

“Oh, no, thou art not fit to die; but hear me; this blade, consecrated to defense from dishonor, saved me once. Dost thou remember? It will do it again, if need be. The giver sleeps, but his stern charge haunts me still. ‘Protect at any cost from dishonor!’”

“Wouldst thou shed blood of any here!”

“Sir Charleroy saw me slay the Turk. Had I failed, thou falling, this blade would have found my own heart. Push me onward by thy imperiousness and I will slay the babe and then myself! Methinks, it would be an atonement for which my parent would forgive my breaking of his heart. Ah, then sweet rest; life’s tumults over! God would pity the tempest-tossed soul that, through such bitterness, flung itself on Him.”

“Dost mean all this, Rizpah?”

“Can I trifle? Ask thyself. Have I ever? My desperate sincerity made me thy wife, but now it impels me to defy all thy attempts to make me thy minion, unthinking echo or slave; or worse, the ruiner of that girl.”

“Well, then, woman, since thou or I must yield and I can not, thou wilt not, I execute my before announced purpose to have my lawful authority acknowledged with thee or——”

“Say the rest, find peace away from me——”

“Which?” sternly demanded the knight.

“As thou dost wish, only I’ll not give up my child to Christian sacrifice.”

“Then we can not live in peace together.”

“To which I reply, that God never ordained marriage to bind people to the home when they can only for each other in that home make a very Tartarus!”

The knight was humiliated. He had believed that the woman’s heart could not bear the thought of separation, and now to find her willing to give him up, rather than her will, her faith, hurt his pride. But they had made an utter crossing of purposes. He ran out of their stone house, his heart as stony. A little way off he paused, looked back, and said, “For the last time, Rizpah, what dost thou say?”

“Go; once for love I gave up all. Again I do it; I give thee up for the highest of all love, the love of a mother for her child!”

Caressingly Rizpah embraced the infant; and then fell on her knees with her face averted from her husband. He took one glance, and realizing the defeat of his strong will by that kneeling woman, angrily hurried away. The die was cast. He turned his back on Rizpah, swearing that he would never more return.

For a few days Rizpah lived in a crazy dream; now laughing as she thought of her victory; again letting her maiden love re-assert itself; then assuring her heart that all was over and well as it was. But a woman who imagines that reproach or even open violence can utterly extirpate love that once completely possessed her, knows not her own heart. Especially is this true if to that heart, she at times, press, lovingly, a child begotten in that love, and the form bearing the impress of that man for whom sometime she would have willingly died.

One night the baby cried piteously, being ill, and Rizpah was feeling very lonely because so anxious for it. She had sometimes, since Sir Charleroy’s departure, prattled with the baby calling “papa” and “Charleroy,” mother-like, woman-like. Self-condemning, for this was a half confession that she would have the little one think, if it thought at all, that she, the mother, was not to blame for the absence. The baby had caught some names and in its moaning, feverishly cried: “Abbaroy, Abbaroy; I want my Abbaroy.” The cry was piercing to the mother’s heart and conscience. She even then wished for the husband’s return. Indeed, some hot tears fell as she prayed God to send “papa Charleroy back.” The tie of marriage, potent beyond all of earth, now drew her away toward the absent one, and she then began to marvel how easily they had separated; how lightly they had regarded the bonds which after all tightly held them. When lives have blended and been tied together by other lives, it is indeed a prophesy of union “until death do us apart.”

“Abbaroy, Abbaroy! I want my Abbaroy,” still piteously cried the sick child. The night without was raging; the little lamp sent dancing shadows over the black walls of her room and an unutterable loneliness took possession of the woman. One by one thoughts like these arose; “Father dead, mother dead; husband as good as dead; perhaps really so, and my child like to die! What if she should die thus crying for her father! Oh, God spare me this! I’d go mad by her corpse.” “Abbaroy, I want my Abbaroy,” sobbed the child in her sleep. The mother heard the waving palms without. Her vivid imagination turned them into persons, spirits. They seemed to be her dead ancestors and they caught up the cry of her child rebukingly “Abbaroy, I want my Abbaroy.” She swooned now and slept. In the sleep there came a dream. She thought she saw her daughter, grown to womanhood, but pale and sad. She had the hand of her mother and was drawing her toward the sea. Whenever the mother drew back the daughter wailed “Abbaroy, I want my Abbaroy.” Presently their feet touched the water edge, she saw a ship, floating at anchor, but with sails spread partly; on its stern was the name, “England.” The captain stood by the vessel’s side, observing her. At last he cried: “Well, how long must we wait for thee?” A wave seemed to dash against her face and she awakened. The heavy window blind of stone had swung open, the rain was beating in on her. She started up and felt for her child, half fearfully lest a corpse should meet her touch. But she found her hands clasping a little form with fast beating heart and burning skin. The light had gone out, but there alone in that desolate home amid the ruins of past ages, the woman bowed in agonizing prayer. The balm of broken hearts was sought and she for a time was clothed and in her right mind. She arose, serenely, in the morning the cry of the sea captain of her dream in her ears, and the firm resolve in her heart to seek her husband even in far-off England; with him to try for the things that make for peace. Then she opened the iron-bound chest that had come to her from her father and took therefrom a roll of the ‘Kethrubim’ and read. And it so happened that seeking to refresh her mind as to the story of how the giant Sampson got honey out of the slain lion’s carcass, that she might more fully apply the meaning to her own experience, she came to the story of his birth. That story fixed her attention for days. It was like a new revelation to her. And she read and read these words over and over:

“And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the Danites, whose name was Manoah.

“And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou shalt conceive and bear a son.

“Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like an angel of God, and he said unto me, Behold thou shalt bear a son.

“Then Manoah entreated the Lord and said, O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst send come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child.

“And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God came again unto the woman.

“And the woman made haste, and ran, and shewed her husband.

“And Manoah arose, and went after his wife and came to the man.

“And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass. How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him?

“And the angel of the Lord said unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto the woman let her beware.

“So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the Lord: and the angel did wondrously; and Manoah and his wife looked on.

“For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar: and Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground.”

And as Rizpah read, little by little, the truth and beauty of the scene and its words dawned upon her. Thus she meditated: “This is the way God brought forth His giant deliverer, Samson; God appeared to the woman first, but she hasted to tell of the promised blessing to her husband.” When she thought of how that angel-led wife led her husband, she remembered her own fanatical bitterness and was condemned. Then she remembered how Manoah and his wife, together, asked how they should order their child and how, as together they bowed before the Spirit, he ascended in glory over them. “Oh,” she moaned within herself, “if we had only put aside our differences and, forgetting all else, just so sought together the Divine directings!” It was evening as she meditated, and she said within herself: “If ever I can get nigh Sir Charleroy’s heart I’ll tell him all this, and before the altar of a new consecration we’ll give ourselves and ours to God, just this way.” There came a wondrous joy to her heart and the palms that seemed to moan rebukingly without that other night, “Abbaroy, Abbaroy, I want my Abbaroy,” this night reminded her some way vaguely of the beating of mighty wings, approaching nearer and nearer. She felt no longer rage, as she thought about the often bepraised Mary of her husband, but on the other hand, wished she knew more about her, were more like her. It was the woman in her, yearning for a mother.

CHAPTER XVII.
RIZPAH, THE ANCIENT “MOTHER OF SORROWS.”