Nearly a score of years passed away, each having wrought its changes, and Rizpah de Griffin is dwelling quietly with her three children at Bozrah. She is companionless though not a widow. Care has left its stern impress on her every feature; the roses have gone from her cheeks and the snows that tarry, baffling all springs, are on her head. But time that has worn has also ripened. Rizpah has become a self-possessed, stately matron; her form is erect, her eye as bright as ever. Bozrah has not changed; the city sits in its sullen, fixed gloom, seemingly unconscious of the ravages that time works elsewhere. But there have been changes and changes among the people since first the woman of Gerash arrived there. Many former inhabitants have wandered away; some to be swallowed up by the tides of peoples of other climes; some have gone to judgment. But new comers have taken the places of those that had departed and speeded the swift enough forgetting of the absent ones, Rizpah was in high honor, for although she lived in seclusion, mixing very little with any of the people about her, all respected her. Hers was a well-ordered house; Druses, Turks and Hebrews joined in affirming this. She ruled her children firmly and they obeyed her implicitly, for they loved her loyally. We meet her now amid active preparation for the observance of the approaching Jewish Sabbath. With her are two boys, twins, born in London, as like each other as could be, and Miriamne. The latter is in the full possession of her roses, and in the enjoyment of that splendor of personal charm seemingly belonging to all the maidens of Abrahamic descent under “the covenant of the stars and the sand.” For are not Israel’s women not only plenteous and bright and lofty like the stars, and her men numberless, rugged and restless as the surf-washed sands on every shore? Does not this race, in all history, continually attest the persistence and pre-eminence of all good to those who walk under the Divine covenants?
Miriamne not only is seen to possess a gracefulness like unto that of the palm, nature’s pattern of beauty in the East, but she has such robustness of form as might be expected in one born of such a Hebrew mother and such a Saxon father. In her temper, poetic, emotional, oriental, like her mother; in feature and mind more like her father; she was a better, more evenly balanced result than either. It often so happens; the child by some natural selection or some mercifulness, inheriting a character, the resultant of the union of two sets of parental forces, yet finer than either apart. The scientific man in such cases will say, herein we behold, in a new being, physical and spiritual forces in action, the latter gaining the advantage; a prophesy without mystery that at last the fittest only shall survive. The theologian, on the other hand, will see Providence electing the best and preparing choice characteristics for superior works to be done.
At a call of the mother, the children gathered about her, and the group was charming; a picture full of expression and contrasts. The matron cast a look of yearning affection upon her offsprings, and the emotion possessed her until the hard face-lines faded into a sweet smile. Just then she would have been a satisfactory model for an artist painting Madonna. “Thank God, children, the emblem of rest and of hope in ages to come is at hand. I have joyed to-day, in full preparation that this next Sabbath may be piously and earnestly celebrated with all the religious exactness of our people.” Then, patting the boys on their heads with playful tenderness, she continued: “Run away now up to the synagogue-ruin on the hill. Don’t forget your duty in play, lads; be true little Israelites! When ye see the sun go down back of Gilead’s mountains, give us warning of the Sabbath’s beginning. Now mind, keep your eyes toward Jerusalem.”
The lads sped away, and Rizpah following them with her eyes prayed in heart: “God bless them, and though in this place of desolation, make them little Samuels in faith and service.” A little after her face glowed with triumphant joy, for there came back to her ears the boys’ voices, mingling in sacred song. It was the psalm of the “Captives’ Return” that they sang. The declining sun began to throw its last rays through the open windows of the huge stone home, flooding the black basalt walls and pavement with golden tints. Slowly the mother’s eyes wandered from the scene without to objects within, until they rested on a huge painting that covered nearly half the opposite wall. One glance and her whole being seemed transformed. In an instant her reverential and weary attitude was changed to one of excited attention. She grew pale, her body swayed with a waving motion, suggestive of the panther creeping toward a victim. Then her form became rigid like one preparing for some great muscular effort, or endeavoring to suppress some inner tempest. Her face, made habitually calm by the schoolings of adversity, became a theater for expression of the changing emotion within; the mouth-lines putting on a firmness almost hideous; her eyes glittered like a serpent’s in the act of charming; contrasting with the forehead that shone like a silver shield. She was as one under a spell or in a trance; but for a few moments only. There came a light footfall; then a quick, half frightened, piteous cry and Miriamne stood beside her.
“Oh, mother, don’t! mother, mother; thou dost terrify me!” The young woman stopped half way between the open door and her parent. Now she was passing through a great transition. She had seen all that was happening, often before; had often run away from the spectacle to hide it from herself. Now she was trying to nerve herself to penetrate the mystery in the hope of preventing its painfulness. She was at the turning point, where a girl changes to the woman within the circle of parental influences.
But so complete was the absorption of the one gazing upon the spectacle upon the wall, at first the cry was unheeded. In a sort of sudden, trembling desperation the young woman quickly bounded between her mother and the picture. Then, as if realizing the unfilial imprudence of the act, but still unwilling to recede from efforts to break the spell that bound her parent, she fell upon her knees before the seeming devotee and burst into tears. The mother started up a little as one awakening from a dream; then said, with perfect control of voice and manner; “Marah, what ails thee? Art ill? Are the Bedouin coming?”
“No, no,” replied the other; “the picture; the picture!”
“What is it child?”
“I do not know. I only know that your strange, wild gaze upon its hideous group terrifies me! For years I’ve learned to feel a mingled disgust and fright in the presence of the woman in that presentment. When I came in, your face looked like hers. You did not seem to be my own tender mother, but an angry virago. Oh, why do you shadow all our Sabbath eves, by this mysterious, cruel staring and moaning before this imagery of death? You’ve made me to dread the approaching Holy Day, promise of all delight to our people, as the advent of all pain to us.”
“Marah, this is wickedness in thee. Thou shouldst learn to wrap thy soul about with the joys thou knowest, and leave all this that thou dost not understand, most likely terrible to thee chiefly because thou dost not understand it, to go its way.”
“I’ve tried and tried for months to reason thus; but how little comfort to be saying over and over, ‘it’s all right,’ ‘it’s nothing,’ to a fear that stops the very beatings of the heart. Oh, that I could fly from this land of desolations. Its loneliness and shadows keep coming and coming around me until I dread, lest they enter my very being and become part of me. I’ve leaned hitherto alone on my mother’s greater strength for rest. If I come to fear her, I’ll lose my reason!”
“Marah,” said the mother, with enforced calmness, “thou art feverish to-day; thou hast wrought too much. Now retire and say this pillow Psalm; ‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, abideth under the shadow of the Almighty.’ Thou’lt be peaceful in the morning; as are those ever who abide under the shadow of the King.”
But only the more passionately the daughter clung to her mother, and again she renewed her plaint: “Ah, mother, I haven’t strength to take these promises! Oh, forgive me, I can not help it; I feel as if something awful were impending; something coming between us! A curse is on this land. Is it any way over the De Griffins? Tell me, I beseech you, what is that painted thing? Sometimes I run out of the room when alone, as if those men hanging there were still alive, in death’s agony. I’ve dreamed sometimes that they came down in bodily form charging you and me with murdering them; and when I go out at evening, I imagine that the Ismaelitish woman in the foreground is flitting about my path, while in every thicket I hear the flapping wings of her carrion birds. Oh, mother! let us tear down that sole defilement of our own little, only home, and give it to the pilgrim Rabbi, now in Bozrah, that he may burn it with exorcising rites.”
“Then thou thinkest there’s witchery hereabouts, Marah,” said the mother, severely.
By George Becker.
RIZPAH DEFENDING THE DEAD BODIES OF HER RELATIONS.
“I? I do not know what I think, beyond this, that I’m overcome, terrified, made miserable, and you, under some spell for a time, cease to be my mother.”
“My daughter profanes her faith by permitting unreined imaginations to rule her so.”
“Oh, tell me all about this hateful thing! Why it so moves you. You said long ago you would when I was able to bear it. I am no longer a child. Mother, you say you read me like an open book, now look into my heart and see that it is bursting with fright and worry! You say you know woman’s nature; if so, you know that I can suffer when I understand, but shall go mad in the suspense of constant fear of some threatening ill unseen.” Thus speaking and clinging to her mother, with a twining, almost desperate embrace, such as among women implies unerringly that a supreme moment and demand has fallen upon the questioner, she burst forth in tearless sobs. The mother’s face was a study and told of a succession of weighty thoughts; parental authority brooked; infringed; new surprised realization that the daughter was no longer a child, but a wise, earnest woman. Then there was a degree of fearfulness springing from deep love. The elder woman perceived the crisis, and knew full well that in such times denials to a woman meant a dead heart, or worse. Then her manner softened, and drawing her child to her bosom with an embrace passionate in fervor, she tenderly, soothingly spoke to her:
“My most dearly beloved Marah! dismiss all thy fears at once and forever. They are needless. Rest, now and always, as thou never canst elsewhere, in all the world, upon this heart of mine. Rest thou in thy present young womanhood, as calmly, as trustingly, as thou didst in baby-hood. That heart guarded thee more tenderly than its own life then, through storms within and without that nearly broke it. In part thou dost know this; remembering what it has been in loyalty to God and thyself, canst thou pain it by one distrusting thought now?”
“Oh, mother, I know, I know; I do not mean to doubt you, and I remember, with a gratitude beyond all my poor power of speech, your toiling, patient, constant, loving care for me and my brothers. I never can forget that you are a Hebrew indeed, proud to emulate the noble mothers of our nation in its olden, golden days; but after all I must think. I think, sometimes, with anguish, that that awful picture may some way come between us!”
“Why, Marah, impossible! thou art my other self; a fairer copy; as I was at thy age.” Then Rizpah spoke in unusual, confiding tenderness: “We mothers have our vanities and take a secret pride in wearing our daughters on our hearts as precious jewels. When nature gratifies that pride by giving us daughters in form, features and mind, mirrors or glad reminders of ourselves, as we were in the days of young beauty, romancings and hopes, we hug these in our souls in a way thou canst never realise until thou hast been such a mother. Change? I change toward thee? Ah, girl, not being a mother, thou canst not begin to fathom the ocean-depth, the heaven-height, the eternity-like unchanging endurance of a woman’s love, once it has been quickened into the channels of maternal affection. Thou art a woman to all the world, but not so to me. I love thee now as I loved thee when thou wert a babe. To me thou wilt always be a little, lovely, needy creature—an angel touching the fountains of my inmost nature. All earthly friendships change; lover’s love, at first fierce, generally dies as the tides of years roll over it; but, mother-love, in all loving, is the exception. Believe this as thou dost believe the tenets of our faith and thou’ll find thy troubling thoughts fleeing away like mists of Hermon, before the conquering banners of the morning.” There followed a prolonged embrace and a mutual kiss; impassioned, affectionate; an action expressing volumes to one skilled in interpreting the signs, all unvoiced and unwritten, yet, by some constant intuition, known to all womankind as the language of the finest, sincerest loving. That moment these two women passed onward, upward together to a higher, lighter, stronger relationship than they had enjoyed before. They entered the temple where daughter and mother begin the feast of the new revelation; when to the love of parent and child is added that of real companionship. That is a sunny, fruity hour, when a girl is received as a woman by a woman; that woman her mother.
The two sat embracing and happy for a long time; but the old pain suddenly revived—Miriamne’s eyes chancing to stray to the picture. She shuddered, then looked pleadingly into her parent’s eyes. The mother, quickly interpreting the look, tenderly replied: “Sometime.”
“No, oh, no; tell me, mother, all, now! Who, and what are those hanging forms: the horror-frighted, bludgeon-armed woman; the birds of black, hovering over the crosses? Oh! my mother, you trust me; now tell me all or tear that down! You know it’s not lawful for us Jews to have any image of things in Hades.”
The last words moved the mother more than all else that Miriamne had hitherto spoken. Heresy, she abominated; and the chief aim of her life had been to make her children true Israelites by precept and example. To her thinking, Israel alone was right; all others were heathen, to whom was reserved perdition. To an apostate, in her belief, there came a final judgment of misery, beggaring all attempt at description. A little while she hesitated, and then came to quick resolve to tell her daughter all. She arose, walked rapidly back and forth over the stone floor of the abode, and, then stopping before the daughter, said: “Thy wish shall be granted. In love of thee, for lo, these many years I’ve hidden from thee one miserable and dark chapter of our family history. I have drank the bitter waters alone. But too much I love thee to bear the piteous appeal of thy lips, or the look of doubt that sometimes flits in thy questioning eyes. Canst thou bear knowledge that is full of bitterness?”
“Yea, mother,” said Miriamne, “there is no bitterness in reality like that our imaginations conjure up, when fed by mysteries that hang on pictures of such hideous mien——”
“Thou dost force me to the explanation, but, daughter blame me not, if, like Saul of old, who fainted at the sight he compelled Endor’s witch to reveal, thou art given now some knowledge that kills thy sunshine.”
“I’m the daughter of Rizpah and Sir Charleroy. Did they either of them ever fear?”
“Ah! but I have been the very mother of sorrows, ever since thy birth, child. God knows it; and it were best to leave it all to Him alone.”
“But, mother, I’d gladly share your sorrows. Sorrow shared is ever lightened by the sharing. Let us bear the corpse between us, and in this lonely life we shall be made more than ever companions, through a common grief.”
“So be it then. Thou shalt know all.”
And Rizpah, going to a seldom-used iron-bound chest, drew therefrom a parchment roll; handing the same to her daughter, she said: “Read. It’s part of Father Harrimai’s ‘Kethubim.’” The place opened to the story of the famine in David’s time, which endured three years, because of wrongs done to the Gibeonites by the children of Israel. As Miriamne read onward, Rizpah from time to time gave explanations:
“Dost perceive, daughter, that Jehovah, though not revengeful, is a God of recompenses?”
“He was the friend of the Gibeonites though they were not of his chosen people; because they had no other friend, I think,” said Miriamne.
“Yes, and He held all Israel responsible for what they were willing to let their blood-thirsty Saul perform. As he had been, so had been the people; they were guilty, and God needed to punish them. How just! Oh! God is sure to press men to a conclusion. Read what David said to the stranger Gibeonites;” Miriamne continued:
“And he said, what ye shall say, that will I do for you.
“And they answered the king, the man that consumed us, and that devised against us;
“Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah.
“And the king said, I will give them.
“But the king spared Mephiboseth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul.
“But the king took the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephiboseth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel.
“And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the beginning of barley harvest.”
Miriamne paused; then addressed her parent:
“Mother, I’d not be an heretic, and yet I can not see the justice of hanging the sons for the father’s sins?”
“Perhaps they were parties to the murder; perhaps publicly, or in heart, defended it. At any rate, from the beginning it has been so. Thou and thy brothers are living here fatherless on account of him that begat you——”
“Shall I stop reading this bloody story?” quoth Miriamne.
“It pains thee. Thou must go on now, though thou shouldst fall fainting, as Saul at Endor. Read.”
The daughter complied, and with quickly revived interest, for she came to the name “Rizpah” the second time, but before she had not noticed it in reading.
“And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.
“And it was told David what Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done.
“And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son, from the men of Jabesh-gilead, which had stolen them from the street of Beth-shan.
“And he brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son; and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged.
“And the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benjamin, in Zelah, in the sepulcher of Kish, his father: and they performed all that the king commanded. And after that God was entreated for the land.”
When the last clause was finished, Miriamne cast a glance at the huge painting on the wall.
“I understand in part; that is Rizpah and her crucified children?”
“It is well, daughter. Behold her; this is motherhood of strongest type! Humanity is no where perfect, but of all the erring ones of life, I most believe in those, who, among many perversions of judgment and blemishes of character, have some one or more of lofty virtues. Methinks a soul may be drenched by many sins, and yet, if within its very core it carry sincerely and sacred as its life some noble, dominating passion, like the holy love of parent for a child, that soul will ever have thereby a gate open to the Holy Spirit, a handle for the grasp of saving angels, and, while life lasts, an ever-flying signal lifted toward heaven. Such prayer unspoken is a beseeching, not vainly for the interceding love of Him that weighs the spirits.”
“But, mother, you’re not such a tigress? Not like that woman?”
“How proud I’d be to be indeed all she was. The exact interpretation of ‘Rizpah’ is a ‘living coal,’ but her name interpreted by her life is better called the ‘flaming beacon.’ We mutually lament the dispersion of our people! Dost thou remember how last Sabbath thou wepst while thou didst read to me the words of the blessed Isaiah foretelling the long-delayed but Divinely-promised regathering of all our tribes?”
“Oh! that the hills of Judea would glow with the beacons of that day!”
“Daughter, God’s beacons are chiefly noble spirits, such as Moses of the Exode, Samson, the giant, David, Nehemiah and Cyrus. The world has not yet interpreted Rizpah, the ‘burning coal,’ the beacon fire. Once I was frail, timorous, wavering, but devotion to that character has transformed me. When the world’s mothers look to her pattern, there will be a new order of motherhood; then look for heroic men and an heroic age!”
“But was not Rizpah a Hivite, a descendant of Ham, and so of those forever under God’s curse?”
“My child, ancestry is not always the test of worth. The consequences of sin may pass down from sire to son, but never so as to bar the way to hope, nor dam up the stream of ever-pitying mercy of heaven. Rizpah had some true Jewish blood within her heart, and in the long run God’s providence doth work to make the better part, of admixed good and ill, dominate. Besides all this, the lovely Ruth, thou dost emulate so well, was foreign to our people. So, too, was Rahab; and our Rabbis tell us she was in the royal line of David, from which at last the Messiah shall arise. Those women, with Rizpah, were beacons to the world! While mankind revere true love, constancy, loyalty and faith, those names will be remembered.”
“But, mother, Rizpah was the concubine of Saul, and as I think of how you oft denounce the harems of our neighboring Bedawin, my very soul blushes at hearing you admire this woman so.”
“Ah, daughter, methinks she was more sinned against than sinning. Recall the unequal struggle: Rizpah, a foreigner, of a nation subdued by kingly Saul; he a man, strong of mind, a king, hedged with a sort of divinity that in the minds of the simple ever hedges kings about; making their words and deeds seem always right and just. If women made the laws and customs there never would have been known on earth unclean polygamy, but ever instead thereof the union only, in holy wedlock, of two lives, mutually consecrated, serviceful and constant. Under wrong teaching and tyranny, a woman may do that which purer societies condemn, and yet retain a conscience white and clean before God.
“Within that book of Samuel, which I hold, it is recorded that Ishbosheth, a son of Saul, who for a time reigned in a rebellious confederacy, a horseman’s day’s journey from here, at Mahanaim, charged Rizpah once with an act of impurity.
“The record makes no mention of Rizpah’s reply. Like thousands of women before and since her time, she was defenseless against slander. Men, the stronger, may malign without evidence, and often it doth outweigh, to ears ripe to feast upon the carrion of a scandal, the indignant denial of outraged purity, accompanied even with evidences which make the thought of crime upon the part of the one belied, seemingly an impossibility. But leave all that; I appeal in behalf of my revered Rizpah to her wondrous loyalty as a mother. Tell me not that this sublimely heroic woman, who patiently watched the corpses of her sons and other kin from April, through all the lonely nights and through all those burning days, until October rains wept them to their burial, ever did an act that could let loose upon them living or dead the hounds of scandal! They may have suffered death as malefactors, in God’s sight, but still her mother-love clung to them. She who kept those long vigils, lest beast or bird of prey should harm or mar or pollute the bodies precious to her if to no one else, I am assured, beyond all cavil, never did aught that could have stung their brows or embittered their hearts! Such motherly devotion as hers doth fully purify a woman. He who planned society, with its sacred foundations resting so largely on the integrity of its child-bearers, has planted in the bosom of woman this all-possessing love of her offspring, as her safeguard. It’s her wall of fire by day and by night, and verily more restraining to her than any law of man, command of God, or fear of hell!”
“And are loving mothers never unchaste?”
“The Jews hated swine and the monster deities of Chaldeans, because both destroyed their young, and our holy Talmudists declare that Mary of the Christians, not being as pure as the Nazarene’s followers affirm, is doomed to bide even in lowest Hades with the bar of hell’s gate through her ear. No, I, as a Jewish woman, believe that one of my sex being a mother and impure is neither loving, nor a woman!”
“How I revere the noble sentiments of Rizpah of Bozrah!”
“For all I am, after God, praise that ancient, fervent beacon, Rizpah of Gibeah!”
“I am in part reconciled to her, but yet I wish, in frightened agony often, that you would renounce this historic Rizpah; lioness-like in her devotion to her offspring, but full of murderous fury toward any that crossed her love. Our holy book must have sweeter, nobler ideals for our inspiration.”
“I judge this Hebrew heroine mother by her influence upon me, and that has been for good. The hypocrite or romancer may call the passer-by to prayer and have no more soul in it than the Moslem trumpet. Only those who have some God-like saintliness of character, can win effectually, unceasingly. There is mighty power in the unspoken sermons of such a life. I cherish Rizpah, whose touch of moral power, coming where and when I was weak to callowness, girded me with purpose for wavering and thews of steel for rosy softness. I was once like thee, a fragile flower, but the example of that patient woman’s heroism, ever before me, has fitted me to meet my awful trials and worthily inhabit this giant-built house. Thou dost remember, Miriamne, at last Passover time they wish, as thou didst read to me of Jacob, that even now a ladder with communicating angels might be set up from earth to heaven?”
“Ah, that would be a feast; angels in burning bushes, or by fountains as in Hagar’s time! I often worship in the thicket and pray for heaven’s messengers from Paradise to fan the flames of our devotion, as Gabriel did the orisons of Daniel. But I’d be afraid to meet an angel like your Rizpah.”
“Not so with me, Marah. Indeed, I often think of Rizpah and Jacob together. Thou rememberest how, not far away, at Mahanaim, Jacob of old met a host of angels? They came to cheer him in an hour of sad depression, the saddest kind indeed; for in that hour he remembered amid his repentings that he was soon to face the brother whom long years before he had wronged. Well, when Rizpah, by the death of Saul, was released from that domineering madman-king, she made her home at Mahanaim, the place near which Jacob counseled with the angels. Methinks she there also communed with the spirits that do excel in strength. She may have been weak before, but in that angel school she outgrew her master. Ay, my child, it is marvelous how a woman rises under the impulses of a noble love, holy companionship and plenty of sorrow. Many a male brute has flattered himself he was crushing into fawning servitude by his imperious, selfish will, his weaker child-burdened mate, only some day to find the victim asserting her individuality with power unearthly. The partridge skulks, terrified amid lowly grasses from the hunter, little by little gathering courage for her pinions, then she suddenly departs to return no more, meanwhile luring the hunter from her treasures.”
“That is, an abused wife should run away?”
“Oh, perhaps not; but she may rise above her tyrant.”
“I can’t but remember the woman’s rough strength.”
“To me the all-controlling love of Rizpah for her children condones her former errings, her Philistine ancestry, her craggedness. I believe she soars with the angels now, and to Israel she must be a pattern until some more saintly and finer woman arises to take the leadership of woman.”
“Will such an one appear, mother?”
“God’s dial is a circle, with a sweep like eternity. He knows no hurry; yet, though never weary, is never belated. We are not waiting for him, but He is for us. When man is ready to take up his pilgrim march to the highlands of a living, all light, all beautiful, there’ll be beacons and beacons from the valleys to the hills.”
Just then the lamp by which they had been sitting, for some time having only flickered, was suddenly quenched, and there was a sound of the fluttering of wings in the room. Miriamne screamed and clung to her mother, her thoughts on the vultures of the picture.
“’Twas only a bat, daughter!”
“Oh, this ghostly place!” the young woman cried.
“Ghosts and bats are very harmless; would men were like them!” bitterly spoke Rizpah.
“A bat putting out our light; it’s like an omen!”
“Yes, wrongs do put out the light of human joy, but only for a little while; look out to the firmament, my clinging other self, as I do, for comfort by times. See, the stars are immovable; all bright and in seemingly everlasting calm. Never forget in any long trial, or sudden terror, that when our human-made lights expire we are to turn our eyes toward heaven. In truth, God Himself often quenches our lights to make us look up to His.” The mother, approaching the stone casement, and looking out on the sky, continued: “The heavens are full of beacons and lamps. They shall light us to bed as His truth lights those who will to serene, long rest. Good night, my child.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE QUEEN PROCLAIMED IN THE GIANT CITY.
Another Passover season was at hand, and the few Israelites in and about Bozrah, not being permitted to celebrate the feast, at Jerusalem were gathering for a “Little Passover” at the Giant City. There was sadness, murmurings and fears in the hearts of the people. Sadness in remembering the decadence of Israel; fears, for there were Mamelukes hovering threateningly in large numbers near the city; murmurings, because fault-findings, the last stage to indifference, flourish when religion is decaying. Faith and doubt waged their eternal battle; and at Bozrah, doubt appealing to present facts, had the easier part against faith, appealing to past providences or unseen hopes. There was clamor for a change, but the leaders of the people were purblind to any new light. They crushed their own secret doubts and continued to enforce what they believed, because they had believed it. They felt a sense of responsibility, and that made them very conservative. Before the sun had reached high-noon Bozrah was all astir. There were but two principal streets in the city; these ran by the four great points of the compass and crossed at its center. Two companies of Jews of very different make-up, each moving along one of those streets, met, and, in passing, quite accidentally, the two processions formed a cross. One of the companies was made up of priests and serious old men, the true elders of the people. They tried to appear very wise and very pious, and succeeded. They tried as well to cheer and comfort all, and did not succeed very well. The other company was made up of young Israelitish men. They were going eastward; the old men walked northward, away from the sun, now a little more than southeast. By the side of the elders glided a row of shadows of their own making. But they were as unconscious of these as of the shadows their musty traditions flung over the people.
The youths felt like singing, so they sang. The sadness that was so general was not very deep with them. They would have liked to have sung a sort of convivial song; but, that being forbidden, they compromised with their consciences and the situation by singing the one hundred and twenty-second Psalm, with the vigor of a madrigal. They had a surplusage of vitality, and they let it flow out in the pious canticle. Certainly they conserved outward propriety; as to their inward feelings, they themselves hardly knew what they were; hence, it would be unjust, for one without, to pass judgment. The Psalm was appointed to be sung at this feast. They say the returning captives, coming from Babylon, centuries before, sang this song as they ascended to a sight of Jerusalem.
Now, some of the elders had come to think it piety to morbidly nurse their sorrows. They were never happy except when they were miserable. One of these paused and addressed the young singers:
“Children, cease. Your time is too much like a dancer’s.”
Then all eyes turned toward the leader of the youths, a man with a Saul-like neck, large mouth, wet, thick lips, and burning eyes; all bespeaking a person who is never religious beyond the drawings of religious excitement, for excitement’s sake, and never self-restraining, except as checked by fear of a very material hell. Such an one, if he have any regularity in his piety, will have it because somebody opposes, or because, having swallowed, with one lazy gulp, a heavy creed, he thereafter goes about condoning by habit his petty vices, in trying to force others to be better than he himself ever expects to be. Such are never spiritual, and seldom martyrs; but they make good persecutors, and so do a work that compels others, by suffering, to be spiritual, and, may be, good martyrs. This leader made sharp retort, thrusting out his chin to enforce it:
“The Psalm is all right, and, if the old men sang more, they would have less time for moaning. Singing and moaning are much alike, only the former cheers men, the latter, devils!”
“Son,” replied the patriarch, “revile not the fathers. We do not condemn thy joy as sin; but yet it now seems inopportune. We are entering captivity, not liberation. Our holy and our beautiful temple is in ruins; our people like hunted quail.”
“But, this is feast time,” said the youth.
“What a feast! I remember it as it was when the nation gathered at Jerusalem, to the number of nigh 3,000,000, and offered 250,000 lambs. Ah, now, a handful, in this grim old city surrounded by aliens!”
The elder, so speaking, bowed his head, threw his mantle over his eyes and wept; meanwhile his fellow-elders gathered about him, very reverently, and waved their hands rebuking toward the youths. Just then there drew near a beautiful Jewess, led by an aged man, the latter garbed partly as an Israelite, and partly as one of the Druses. He had a saintly mien, and fixed the attention of the elders; but, the young men, with one accord, youth-like, at once erected, in silent worship, an unseen altar of devotion to the new goddess. The grouping was striking and suggestive. The stranger was silent, and seemed to be intent on passing by so; but the elders felt their responsibility. It is the fate of the religious leader to be expected to explain every thing. He must talk to every body, and about every matter. He cannot, when he will, keep quiet and so get the credit for fullness of wisdom, as do some. He must express an opinion, for silence is deemed a greater sin in such than insincerity or words out of ignorance. The foremost of the elders felt called to act, and so confronting the two new comers, sternly addressed the maiden:
“I perceive that thou art of my people; wherefore comest thou here, and in this companionship? Knowest thou not that women are forbidden to be at the first of the feast?”
The young men were not in accord with the elder; they stood apart, and some whispered to others:
“It is Miriamne de Griffin.”
The maiden shrank back a little; but the saintly man with her, advancing a step, replied:
“I am the maiden’s guardian to-day, fathers, and responsible for her act. Say on!”
The elder, though knowing full well who the speaker was, and also fully understanding the import of his challenge, pretended to have neither heard nor seen him. He looked past the speaker, who was championing the maiden, and continued:
“Do thy people at home know of these indiscreet acts?”
“Hold, Rabbi! no insinuations.” The saintly man’s voice was commanding, and compelled silence. He continued: “We go our way, ye yours. Ye can not help yourselves out of your miseries; then presume not to direct us.” He checked his rising anger, remembering that he was a religious teacher, and launched out in a wayside sermon. “Ye children of Abraham, hear me, though I came not to counsel. Ye have stopped my progress, now hear God’s truth! There are dangers without, but greater ones within; though your eyes, being veiled, ye perceive not these things. I noticed as I was coming this way that the tombs and grave-stones every where have been whitened recently. They tell me this was done so as to enable your people plainly to see them and so avoid them. Yet fleeing defilement of the dead, ye live in a grave, all of you. All your prefiguring feasts have ripened into a glowing present that treads out into a full day!”
The old men seemed puzzled and angry; the young men puzzled but glad. They welcomed any sermon if it came with novelty. They reasoned within themselves that the old teachings were dead, and that a new creed could be no worse. If it were novel, it would have at least a temporary freshness.
The speaker proceeded, for the congregation before him, being divided in sentiment, invited him, so far, to proceed.
“Oh, nation, called to be the light of the world, ye bear but phantom torches. Ye move sorrowfully, surrounded by walls of cloud, but just beyond there lies a glorious firmament, aglow with suns of hope and a thousand golden-arched doors made of realized prophecies and promises ripened. Can ye make these ruined habitations of mighty men, now sleeping in the cliffs and valleys about us, again teem with their former life? No, no! yet less readily can ye make your dead, finished, vanishing types take new life. Ye are puzzled and partially angry, but hold in check the hot blood. I’ll soon depart; yet before I go, I’ll tell ye, all, this for your deepest thinking: Ye can never celebrate again the Passover! God shut ye from your Temple long ago to teach you this; these traveling ceremonials of yours are but mockeries. The last real passover was celebrated when your fathers slew the Nazarene——”
“Let us stone him!” vehemently cried the brawny leader of the youths, and the elders turned their backs, as if to give approval to the violence, but not incur liability by witnessing.
The brawny youth seized a boulder as if to begin; the saintly man did not move, and another youth seized the arm of the youth of brawn.
“Young men, I’ll show you an entrancing picture,” was the saintly man’s calm words. They were instantly intent. “Look, you and your old men make the sign of the cross by your ranks. Look again, by the cross stands this damsel, simple, pure and loving; an ideal woman. Her name, Miriamne, or Mary. Do not delude yourselves into the belief that it will be safe or possible for you to silence truth by murdering me. I’d despise your attempt if I did not pity your thoughtless rage. Do not forget the picture of this hour. The Passover will be fully celebrated when the power of the cross and the presence of purity is universally felt in earth. Only your men attend this your sacrifice. It is well; and when men truly bear the burden of sacrifice, women will be at their feast. Now, then, take heed. Farewell, ancients!”
So saying the saintly man of strange garb suddenly turned away, drawing the Jewess with him. The elders were confounded; they could not find words at the moment for reply; they were stung by the pleased and approving glances that the young men gave the departing couple. The elders would have been pleased to have taken the Jewish maiden from her escort with violence, but the latter was a brawny man. The elders knew the youths would not aid; to attempt it themselves would be likely to be a failure, certainly undignified. They deemed it wise, in any event, to conserve their dignity, and being unable to do any thing more terrific, they hissed an orthodox malediction after the departing man and woman. That made the elders feel a little better. The two companies at the crossing of the streets fell to musing and conversing, but in different groups. The old men talked as old men, deploring the present and be-praising the past; the youths deplored the present and be-praised the future; some of them trying to interpret the words of the saintly man. They all wanted to be very orthodox Jews, and yet they all felt that the stranger’s words were full of sweetness and good cheer. Some of the youths, like others of their age, had unconsciously sided with the strangers on account of the woman’s influence. They admired her, and the side she was on was charmingly invincible.
“The Arabs are coming!”
It was a cry starting up from all directions, and passed from lip to lip like the tidings of fire at night. The city was soon in confusion and panic; then mixed crowds surged toward the crossing of the streets like terrified sheep. They needed leaders or shepherds. But the elders so lavish in advice usually, were dumb with fright now. Yet every body looked toward them for direction. Suddenly, the saintly man and the Jewess reappeared; as suddenly transformed to a self-reliant leader, she cried out: “Youths of Israel, to the defense; the enemy come in by the wall toward the Sun Temple’s ruins!”
“Perhaps it’s the ‘Angel of Death,’” cried the thick-necked leader of the youths.
“The All-Father of the covenant forefend!” groaned some of the elders.
“Fathers,” cried the Jewess, “pray as you can, but we younger ones must fight as well as pray. Pray the men to go to a charge!”
“A Deborah!” shouted the thick-necked youth. “Now lead and we’ll follow!”
“Shame!” cried the saintly man. “Lead yourselves!”
There was no need of argument; the thick-necked youth waved his hand to the other young men and they all dashed away toward the advance of the enemy; all of the city having a mind to fight, becoming instant volunteers. But the elders, with a piety enforced by prudence concluded to stay at the crossing and pray. Perhaps in their hearts they reasoned that if the enemy were repulsed they might claim the glory of having sustained the fighters, as Aarons and Hurs; if the youths and their followers were overcome, then they, the elders, might claim prescience and say at the end: “We knew it were vain to resist.”
Soon there were heard the shouts and clangor of conflict. The fight was on. Miriamne breathlessly carried the news to her mother.
The matron laid her hand on her bosom, not to still a fluttering heart, but affectionately to toy with the handle of her faithful dagger.
“Oh, mother, when will these troublous times end? what shall we do?”
“Daughter, fight! if need be.”
“But we are only women!”
“But this is woman’s time; remember Sisera!” Rizpah began dressing for departure.
“Oh, mother, wait! Let us send the boys for news into the city. Perhaps the worst has not come, when the mothers must take arms.”
Rizpah silently assented. The boys were sent, and in half an hour returned with hot and beaming faces. “The Mamelukes are all slung out of the city! Lots of them killed,” both exclaimed, between their pantings.
“How brothers: is it all over?”
“Yes, all over! They’re gone! Oh, you ought to have seen how our young men and the Druses raced them,” interposed one.
“If it hadn’t been for the Druses we’d all been murdered!” cried the other. Then the brothers caught up the narrative in turn.
“And, Miriamne, some of the young soldier-like men, after the fight, went about shouting ‘cheers for the flag of Maccabees and the maid of Bozrah!’ They say the ‘maid of Bozrah’ means you. What do they intend?”
Miriamne seemed not to hear the question. She was engrossed with her own thoughts and thus was meditating: “It’s just as the Old Clock Man said! The Druses by their needed aid prove it; the Jews need a Saviour!”
“Boys,” presently questioned Rizpah, “Were many of the heretics killed?”
“Oh, ever so many! Yes, and we want cloths for the wounded,” said the questioned lads.
“Now, may the alien dead rot!”
“But we must bring cloths.”
“Who says it?”
“The ‘Old Clock Man’ told every body to help the hurt.”
“And who, pray, is this ‘Old Clock Man?’”
Rizpah was quickly answered by Miriamne.
“I know him, mother. He’s the leader of the Christians here, and a wondrously good old man who heals the sick, feeds the poor, teaches the ignorant and gives the true time of day to every body by the bell of his religious house!”
The mother fixed her eyes penetratingly upon Miriamne for a moment, then frigidly questioned:
“And since thou hast disobeyed me in making the acquaintance of a stranger, thou wilt now explain why thou hast never mentioned to me this ‘Old Clock Man’ of whom thou dost seem to know so much! Who is he?”
“Why, he’s the ‘Old Clock Man’ who mends poor people’s clocks, plays with the children and is doing every body kindness!”
“Some Christian witchery!”
“Oh, mother, he’s an angel if ever there was one on earth!”
“Is he a Jew?” almost hissed Rizpah.
“I’ve forgotten to ask about that; but I’m certain he is, if only Jews are good, for he is a saint of God.”
Rizpah’s face wore a sneer as she again spoke: “How canst thou tell, Inexperience?”
“By acts. He goes about seeking poor people to clothe and feed, and he is their physician as well, and will take no pay.”
“Some Christian perverter, trying to seduce the unthinking by pretended service. Beware of such, Miriamne!”
“But healing the sick and setting people’s clocks right can’t do harm! I’m certain of that?”
“How sly; he would set all Jewry to Christian time and faith at the same instant!”
“I love his way, mother; it is so good; more I do not know.”
“The old knave!”
“Oh! mother, he is old, but no knave. Ought we not to be reverent to the hoary head in the way of righteousness?”
“Yet an old man may poison women and children. I told thee the story of Agag once, daughter.”
“Yes.”
“I mean now to tell thee if this man be not a Jew, let him be like Agag, hewn to pieces. Flee him as a leper.”
“He don’t talk so. He says all mankind are brothers. Only to-day, he cried, to the men in the beginning of the fight, ‘save your families as best you may,’ kill the wounded Moslem with kindness!” The rapid converse of the two women was interrupted by the impatient cry of the boys for wraps and lint. As they started away, Miriamne darted after them, saying: “I’ll go and help those caring for the wounded.”
“Wayward,” called after her the mother, “remember my commands. Keep away from the old Perverter, and minister to suffering Israelites, only. God can spare the rest! Let them die.”
In the midst of the suffering ones, Miriamne soon found herself, and as might be expected; there, too, was the “Old Clock Man.” As they met he said, laconically, “It is fitting that woman’s tender hands minister thus.”
“Thanks,” was her reply.
Presently Miriamne questions, with an unaffected diffidence, her companion.
“Will you tell me your name?”
“Call me father, that’s enough.”
“Ah! but I can not, you are not my father.”
“I may be.”
“What jest is this! I’ve a father living?”
“I am father to multitudes, but after the flesh, childless.”
“Oh, thy children are dead, then?”
“Nay, some dead and some living; but, living or dead, they are my children.”
“This is a wilderment to me. Where is your wife?”
“Everywhere. In early youth, with vows unutterable, I wed my church. She is Humanity’s mother, and I the father of all of her children, who will let me serve them.”
“And is this the Christian faith?”
“It is mine, anyway.”
“I like it. I’m sure it must be safe; being so good, and so you may be my father that way. Are there many fathers like you?”
“Many, and many needed, else sin will make all orphans.”
“And you have no wife, no home?”
“A home most beautiful, which, at sunset, I’ll enter through a door, once shut, not possible to be opened by my hands, though its fastenings be but grass and daisies.”
“You mean death?” As she said it, tears welled in Miriamne’s eyes.
“Weep not, my child, death is beautiful, at least to me.”
“Oh, good man—father. I do not yet know how to think about you or these things that you say. What made you so different from the people I know?”
“A woman, a lovely woman.”
“Your mother?”
“Not as you think.”
“Oh, then pardon my curiosity. You had some love?”
“Thou hast said it.”
“Why did you not wed her? Did she die?”
“A woman’s question? I’ll tell thee all some other time. I hear approaching voices.”
“Tell me just a little more now; do?”
“Are the wounded all attended properly? Mercy first, stories and sermons after.”
“Ah, here come my brothers. I’ll inquire;” and away ran Miriamne to a group of youths, singing a roundelay, of which she caught but a few lines;