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

“And do these stars assure, Cornelius?”

“I saw a star no cloud can ever hide, through the darkest part of the storm.”

“A star?”

“Yes, ‘Mary, Star of Sea.’”

“I do not comprehend you.”

“God’s love! He that guided the maiden orphan of Bethlehem through the besetments of her life, amid the tempests of Jewry and Rome, purely, safely, gloriously, to the end; while many of noble birth and having every earthly good went down to ruin, walks ever on the wave where faith voyages.”

“And you thought of the Holy Mother in the storm?”

“Yes, this Adriatic is full of angels, that come in thoughts, or before the eyes! You remember Paul, tempest tossed a day and a night on this sea, was found by the Divine Messenger that night when the darkness was thickest?”

“And this ‘Star of the Sea?’”

“It tells me mother-love was carried by a dying Savior into the heart of the Triune, Eternal God, and we are His children, and He became Father and Mother to us. You have seen the hen gather her chickens, as human mother shelters with her arm or apron her child in pain or peril?”

“How touching! Think you He felt for us like tenderness in the height of the storm?”

“He sought in His plenteous wisdom mother love to sustain Himself, during the pain and perils of His incarnation, and will ever surely grant a love and care to His own beloved ones in suffering or danger as tender as that He sought and needed for Himself.”

“Surely this is a grateful, natural reasoning; but do you believe Mary presides over the sailor especially?”

“It is enough for me to know that the Father through Mary exemplified His motherliness.”

“I’ll never more call yon bright luminaries Castor and Pollux, but rather Jesus and Mary, the guides and the defenders!” And for a long time they gazed at the double stars, the storm slowly abating. Once the youth, drawing the maiden closely to himself, questioned:

“Can not we call the stars in conjunction, ‘Cornelius and Miriamne’?”

They had been watching, in sweet converse, there, a long time; there were faint traces of dawn in the east, and Miriamne had just been thinking, “Palestine receives us with illumination;” then she bethought herself that she and the man with her were going hither to proclaim the Gospel of eternal light. The question of her lover recalled the converse of the day before. That seemed fact, unchanged; all occurring since, dream. She arose, pointed eastward, and firmly said: “There lies our work, our all. May a glorious day enhalo all God’s chosen country ere long. Cornelius, yesterday we promised solemnly that we dare not turn from now; especially after our wonderful deliverance!” She glided away to her cabin, leaving the man alone to contemplate the poor comfort of being praised as a martyr, on a cross of self-sacrifice; the pains of which, if not as awful as those of Calvary, were destined to be more prolonged. His face was as if sprinkled with white ashes; it was so pale, so blank. After the tempest they spoke very little with each other. Miriamne waved away any attempt at re-opening the subject, with a motion of the finger to the lips, signaling silence, and a glance all tenderness, but full of pitiful pleadings to be spared. The young man but once or twice essayed the discussion, fearing on the one hand to trust himself to speak, and on the other hand feeling that any effort to change his fate would be hopeless. But he and she were full of inner conflicts. Then their pathways seemed stony, brier-tangled. They had both elected, for Guide and Ideal, Jesus and Mary; they were both going toward the cross in a noble consecration of their lives. But they denied themselves that that sustained Jesus, home love, such as he found at Bethany; conjugal love, such as sustained Mary, the wife and the mother, as well as the disciple. They had as their loftiest ambition the purpose of making the world happier and better, and began by making misery for themselves. They had read that a star led the wise men of the East to Christ in a cradle, the light of the Gospel rising first in a little home circle. They looked at the double stars above them after the storm that night almost until dawn, and then turned away to go, each into the dark like a lone wandering star. Each was in part the victim of a fabricated conscience, and of a misconception of duty.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE QUEEN IN THE VALLEY OF SORROWS.

For many days Sir Charleroy and Miriamne tarried at Acre, the latter seeking to banish repining on account of him whom she had sent away at the behest of conscience, by ministries for her parent. With alacrity she joined the tours of her knightly father, visiting the scenes where he once battled, listening, from time to time, with unaffected delight, to his recitals. The tides of fanatical conquests had wrought few changes on the face of the city, and the realism of those days of siege, of the stern compacts made in the last hours of the Crusaders, the solemn religious services before the last battle, the death struggle and the disordered retreat, was complete. The excitement of revived memories seemed to lift up the knight from the syncope of ill health. This encouraged the maiden to solicit the reviews and recitals of her father. The night before their departure from Acre, as determined, the knight and his daughter stood together contemplating the sacred pile which stood in the moonlight and shadows, mostly in shadows. The soldier of fortune, having told its story over and over, was now silent, dreaming of the past.

“Selamet!”

They both started, for the voice was like one from the tomb, none but themselves being apparent.

“I’m afraid here; let’s be going, father,” whispered Miriamne, essaying to withdraw.

Thereupon there glided out of the shadows a stately form who, drawing near to the father and daughter, spoke:

“Fear not, lady! Knight, they can not be foes who court kindred memories and hope of like colors at the same shrine!”

“Thou speakest with Christian allusions the ‘peace’ word of the Turk.”

“I wear the Turkish ‘selamet,’ as I do this Turkish harness, a loathed necessity, but without; the peace I pray and feel is the mystic inner peace.”

“As a Christian?”

“Yea; nor do I fear confession, since I am speaking to those who abhor the Crescent.”

“A pious Jew would as soon adhere to Astarte with her orgies as to bow to the mooned-crown she wore.”

“Jews? No, not Jews! Such would not sooner run from the moon-mark than they would from the shadows which fall down about you from yon grand and awful sign.”

The speaker pointed to the crossed spire above, as he spoke.

“No more avoidance; we are brethren. I’m Sir Charleroy de Griffin, Teutonic knight.”

“And not unknown. The story of thy valor, even here, lives in the bosoms of true companions. I’m a Knight Hospitaler of Rhodes, yet fameless.”

The two men came closely together; there were a few secret tests. The Hospitaler said:

“In hoc signo vinces!”

Sir Charleroy crossed his feet, stretched out his arms and murmured something heard only by his comrade. It made the other’s eyes lighten with pleasure.

To Miriamne it was a dumb show; but the tokens given and received were useful to pilgrims in those perilous times.

“Whither, Sir Charleroy?”

“To-morrow, toward Joppa.”

“So, ho! By interpretation, The Watch-tower of Joy. From thence one may see Jerusalem! And then?”

“And then? God knows where! A useless life, like mine, is ever aimless.”

“No, no, father!” interrupted the daughter; “not useless. No life that God prolongs is useless.”

“True; the girl is right, Teuton. Aspiration will cure thee, since it’s the mother of immortality. I go to Joppa also.”

“They say, Hospitaler, its sea-side is full wild; its reefs like barking Scylla and Charybdis? I hope it may be so; I’d like a terrible uproar.”

“The sea is the emblem of change; from calm to weary moan, to howling terrors and back again.”

“But the people? They say Joppa’s outside is fine, naturally, though, within, the life of its people is mean, colorless; a charnel-house whose activity is that of grave worms!” And Sir Charleroy shuddered with disgust at his own figure.

“I think the legend of Andromeda, said to have been chained to Joppa’s sea-crags for a season, to be persecuted by a serpent, then freed, prophetic. Joppa may have a future.”

“How?”

“Oh, the chained maiden was boasted by her fond mother as more beautiful than Neptune’s Nereids, hence the persecution. Crescent faiths have been the persecutors of Joppa and all the other beautiful Andromedas of this land.”

“And the chains are riveted?”

“No, not certainly. There was, in the myth, a Perseus of winged feet, having a helmet that made invisible and a sickle from Minerva, goddess of wisdom; he slew the serpent, then wed the victim.”

“Now the key, further.”

“When wrongs overwhelm all, women suffer most; but time brings their deliverance.”

“The myths are as full of women as the women full of myths!” exclaimed Sir Charleroy.

“But Andromeda, the woman, was blameless!”

“Yet it’s strange that in all men’s fightings, as in their religions, constantly the woman appears,” replies Sir Charleroy.

“I’d have thee think, knight, of the legend; it tells how men, in those dark times, tied their faith to the sure conviction that right would triumph, wrong be slain, and the martyrs at last go up among the stars. See how they placed their Andromeda in the constellation now above us. Perseus was a Christian, or rather a Christian was a Perseus.”

“Now, thou art merry!”

“No; I mean St. Peter; he was a Perseus. Hearken to the word:

“‘Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha: this woman was full of good works and alms-deeds.

“‘And it came to pass that she died.

“‘The disciples sent unto Peter two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.

“‘When he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats and garments which she made, while she was with them.

“‘But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body, said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

“‘And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive.

“‘And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord.’”

“Why, Hospitaler, thou hast a memory like an elephant or an emperor and a tongue like a sacrist!”

“Well, the time for swords being past I have taken to books; their leaves are wings. The world will be conquered yet by the words of the Swordless King.”

“And thou wouldst liken Tabitha to Andromeda?”

“Wasn’t she a real beauty, as her name is interpreted? Beautiful old soul! She robed the poor! Peter bringing her to the truth of the new life smote the dragon at Joppa, as a very Perseus.”

“A woman! a woman, again leading the army of salvation!”

“After that Peter slept on the house top of Simon the Tanner, and God gave him the vision of Jew and Gentile, bond and free, rich and poor; all, as one family coming into the benign rays of the Sun whose wings are full of healing.”

“And will that day come, Sir Hospitaler? I’m feeling almost a frenzy of desire for it!”

“Surely as the morning to Acre; but we must hie homeward; good-night; I’ll see you at the quay to-morrow.”

From Acre, Miriamne and her father, next day, set sail. The companions on the journey from Acre by Joppa arrived at Jerusalem, there to separate soon, for Miriamne, with every ingenious device, urged her father forward. Bozrah was constantly uppermost in her mind.

“We part, Sir Charleroy, to-morrow?” said the Hospitaler.

“If thou dost elect to stay in sad Jerusalem, surely.

“Yes; I’d go mad here from doing nothing but wrestling with my thoughts. In fact, I guess I’d go mad anywhere, if long there. I think, sometimes, that my mind’s in a whirlpool, moving not like others; yet, round and round in some consistency, carrying its befooling creeds, hopes, dreams, visions, phantasmagoria in a pretty fair march. I’m sure, more than sure, that if I once stopped moving, my brain would rest like a house after a land-slide, tilted over, while all the things in the whirlpool would drift about in hopeless confusion.”

“Thou dost talk like a physician, gone mad with philosophy!”

“No doubt of it; that’s all because I’ve been idling here a month; a week longer and God knows who could set me going again, rightly.”

Then the knight laughed merrily; very merrily, in fact, for a man who had trained himself to morbidness. The Hospitaler replied:

“I see nothing for me beyond the Holy City and its historic surrounds. I’m training myself to proclaim God’s kingdom and must begin at that pre-eminent, world over-looking point, Jerusalem.”

“But there are no schools to fit one there?”

“The most informing and man-expanding on earth; the deathless examples of the worthies; best studied where they lived their mightful living. I go now to Golgotha.”

“Golgotha? ‘The Place of the Skull?’”

“Even so, sometimes called the Valley of Jehosaphat.”

Sir Charleroy rubbed his head as one well puzzled, and was silent.

“Oh, knight, thou hast forgotten the goings forward of Ezekiel’s mind, prophetically. It was in Kidron, the Golgotha Valley, that he had the vision of the dry bones. Let me read:

“‘Behold, there were very many bones in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.

“‘And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.

“‘Again He said unto me, Prophesy;

“‘Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:

“‘As I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.

“‘The sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them.

“‘Then said he unto me, say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

“‘So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.’”

“And now, soldier, turned exegete, tell me what thou dost make of the strange phantasm?”

“That God will work in this world a marvelous transformation; those living-dead, all around us and beyond, to the ends of the earth, shall stand in new life. The scene is laid to be in this Kidron valley, to bring all minds to the ‘Light of the World,’ who passed in painful triumph along it, even unto Calvary.”

“But this may not be so, yet it so seems?”

“Hearken again to the prophet’s happy ending:

“‘Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.

“‘My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’

“All this,” continued the Hospitaler, “is what is to come, is coming. The dawn of this day began when Jesus passed over Kidron!”

“And yet, Rhodes, I’m doubtful. Do not the correspondences remote, mislead thee?”

“If a crusade leader sent a summons like this wouldst thou respond, trusting? ‘Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand?’”

“The Hospitaler knows I would.”

“Well; God by His Prophet-Herald, Joel, so alarms the nations. And more, we have a broader summons,” and the preacher soldier read again:

“‘Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.

“‘Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehosaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

“‘Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.

“‘The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.

“‘The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of His people, and the strength of the children of Israel.

“‘So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain.

“‘Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.’”

Then the Hospitaler closed his eyes, turned his face upward as in prayer, and began speaking like unto one in a rapture or trance:

“When souls would measure themselves for judgment, they must stand by the scenes wrought out by Him that died for men; just hereabouts, when the last judgment comes, the multitudes of earth, tried by the measure of the God-man, will be brought face to face with God’s standard of moral grandeur, sublimely once displayed here. Before its splendor the stars, the finest of men, shall wax dim; human philosophy, the sun of the world, go out, and human religion, ever the child of human desire, shall fade as the setting, waning moon, that emblem of the concupiscent. Then Charity, that never fails, shall come to her throne, the last implement of war be beaten into services of love, while the weak, no more dominated by giant brutality, shall rise to the pre-eminence of moral strength. Adam and Eve, the fallen pair, passed through the valley of sorrow and sin, downward; Christ and Madonna, the new ideals, passed through the valley of sorrow and salvation, upward.”

“Oh, Rhodes, the whirl of my brain is as if touched by the swellings of an anthem. I’ll come right yet, if thou dost enravish me so!” cried Sir Charleroy.

And Miriamne’s face shone as if the sun were on it, but it was not. She was looking away, in soul, to the future. The Hospitaler continued:

“Truly, all heads, as well as hearts, are righted here, where the touch of the Cross makes the dry bones live. Here get I my schooling; this place of the Cross, where the depths of sin, the heights of love, are manifest; from which radiates all holiest tenets, to which and from which flow the streams of Scriptural truth. If only we could get all men to stand sincerely on this lofty hill of vision, overlooking all times to come, all histories past, all mysteries would be explained, all prophecies become clear, and there never would be need on earth again for wars of faith or the burning of heretics. Pilate spake welcome words to the ages when he cried: ‘Miles, expedi Crucem’—‘Soldiers, speed the Cross.’ Its speed is light’s speed.”

As they conversed, the three had slowly journeyed along the Via Dolorosa—the road to the Cross.

“Here,” said the Hospitaler, “it is reported that Jesus yearningly looking back to the weeping women that followed him Cross-ward, cried: ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and children.’”

“The woman again in religion!” exclaimed Sir Charleroy.

“Immanuel spoke to the world, then. When truth goes to crucifixion, women and children—the weaker—may well weep. It’s the Giant’s hour. So children and women ever have been the chief followers of Jesus. No wonder that children brought palms of peace to Him and shouted His praises, while women anointed Him with tears. They knew, by an holy intuition, that somehow He was the King of Love, the defender of weakness.”

“I begin to think, Sir Knight Hospitaler, that the sun of this country has wrapped its gold about thy brain.”

“Oh, father, don’t prevent; these words of his are balm to my soul,” quoth Miriamne.

“Speak on, for the girl’s sake, knight. Speak on; I’ll be silent.”

The Hospitaler continued:

“Daughter, thou dost follow the story as those holy women followed Jesus, afar off; but with tenderness. As they found later unutterable nearness, so shalt thou; God willing.”

“The woman in religion! It’s so. I, a man; this Miriamne, a woman, a girl, my daughter. I’m like a pupil to her, yet I professed this cross-faith more than a score of years before she was born. I’d need a millennium to overtake her, in glory, if we both died now. I’m like poor old David, who fled from his rebellious son, Absalom, over the hills that skirt Kidron. I’m dethroned.”

“Remember, rather, that He who glorified Kidron was ‘obedient unto death.’ Mother and son, together all loving, all loyal in that dread hour, here attested that in David’s kingdom, at the last, at its best, there will be no trampling on the family ties, Sir Charleroy.”

“Wonderful! I never thought of this before, after this manner. But still, the woman leads the world in religion!”

“The woman! Yes, but only when she takes her place, as did Mary, as a follower of Jesus to Calvary.”

“But how, now, about Astarte, Diana, Baaltis?”

“They had their day; rude, gross phantoms; conceived in the hot souls of low and lecherous men; but I told thee, here we might overlook the world. In this valley Athaliah, daughter of cruel Jezebel, Queen of Ahab, and, like her mother, an Astarte-socialist, worshiped the lewd ideal, Baaltis. Death, in shocking form, took off that heathen queen of Israel. God’s revenge, this was.

“And now, I remember that the queen mother of Asa, here, in Kidron, set up the worship of Ashera with its Phallic mysteries; but Asa, the youth, pure of mind and led of God, not only tore down, root and branch the groves and woven booths of licentiousness, but dethroned the woman who had set them up. Just here, in finest contrasts, I remember the Virgin Mary, the pure mother, the ideal woman, who, in this valley of decision, rose for all time the exemplification of truest womanhood—a wife, a mother. Mary has broken forever the idols of Baaltis. While Mary’s memory lasts, part of the enduring, sacred history, toward which all Christian eyes turn, Astarte can never rise under any name or form for long toleration. She is forever broken, and her creed of lust fated to reprobation.

“Wherever this gospel story, eternal and eternally new, is told, there will come to the minds of the hearers a vision of those associated in the last dread hours of the Divine Martyr, in a fellowship of sympathy and sorrow. Among these will stand pre-eminent the women. Simon, the Cyrenian, compelled by the soldiers, aided the trembling sorrow-burdened Christ to bear the cross. And it is easy to believe that the wife of that Simon, who appears later, for a moment, in the praiseful salutations of Paul, as the parent of Christian sons, she reverently called by the great apostle mother, was among the women that were most sorrowful and nearest the dying Saviour. Then there were Mary, the mother of James, Salome, Mary Magdalene, and possibly Claudia the wife of Pilate—that brave woman who advocated Christ’s cause before the proud, implacable Sanhedrim, the howling mob and Imperial Rome’s representatives. What fitting mourners in that touching, yet august funeral march!

“Women are fully capable by nature, through their finest, tenderest chords, ever responsive in woe, to express the whole of grief, however deep! The sex which loves most, loves longest, mourns most easily as well as most sincerely, and has made sorrow sacred by the lavish bestowals of it, whene’er its founts were touched.

“There is an holy, perfumed anointing in their tears. This crucifixion-time was woman’s hour supremely. Mary with magnificent self-possession, heart-broken, yet strong in faith; weeping in eye and soul, but intruding no wild howlings amid those who wept for custom’s sake; tearful, yet retiring in her grief, here passes before our minds at once the most fascinating, winsome, yet pity-begetting woman known to man.”

“Father,” cried Miriamne, restraining but little her own tears: “Are you listening?”

“Yes, yes; oh, yes. The glory of Eden’s noon has fallen on the tongue and brain of Rhodes, and yet I cannot gainsay him; nor would I try to dispel his wise and honored sayings. I can only wonder and wonder how it is that woman rises at the very front when any grand advance is made.”

“Good Rhodes, go on,” spoke Miriamne.

“I’m easily persuaded, for there is something of a savory sweetness to this grief—welcome mother of true penitence, that comes over souls, who, in imagination, follow the steps to the cross. I’ve heard that Mary followed her son from the Judgment Hall to Calvary. He moved at slow pace, and well He might; worn by months of toil for needy humanity; by watchings, teachings and the like; until now ready to drop down under the thorn-crown, the scourging and the cross. But the blessed Virgin, still a woman, still a mother, faltered by the way. Sometimes she hid her eyes from the scourging, sometimes she was pushed aside by those who knew her not, or those who knowing hated her because of her goodness. Tradition tells us she fainted several times overcome by the terrors of that sad journey through the valley. She had small strength to witness the climax of brutality when cruel hands drove the awful nails into that One she loved! The history of that dread hour has often wrung tears from stout hearts; and he who understands in any degree a mother’s heart, easily believes that she was absent when the mob raised the victim on His cross. But, mother-like, nothing could keep her from the final parting, which death brought to her and her son.

“Sorrow sharpens the language of love to a deep expressiveness; when the end was approaching, Mary and John stood side by side and near to the One, who, to them, was dearer than all. I have heard, and I believe that a sign from the Christ had hurried John away, just before His death, to bring mother to the heart that was yearning not more to give than to receive, the comforts that both needed, the assurance of undying affection. The man on the cross, stripped of all earthly except His flesh, even robbed of the tunic that Mary had made, and for which the men of war gambled, as war has often gambled for the patrimony of the King of Men, had little or nothing of earth to give, other than His rights in the hearts of mother and John.

“These were His farewell keepsakes to each. It needs no strained imagination to fathom His heart, for He opened it all in His dying cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ This was not as the cry of a victor, but that of a broken heart; not as a strong man, but typical humanity, alone, facing death as a child. The language He used then was not that usually His, it was the language of His childhood. In every syllable of that cry, one may read, I fear that God, even God, has forsaken me; but mother, my own loved mother! mother, mother, oh, my dying, human heart, leans as a babe on thy bosom!’”

“Here, here!” cried Sir Charleroy. “Quick! Take this cross of a Teutonic Knight of St. Mary; bury it when I’m gone by her grave in Gethsemane! I have praised myself as her champion, and son, and devotee. Heavens! I’m abashed by thy splendid revelation! I never have even dreamed of her glorious worth!”

“Father, my father, be calm, be calm—calm for my sake; you fright me when you so give way. Remember, we’re at the place where a wrong past ends at the right beginning.”

“Thou art my good angel, Miriamne; but, oh, it’s twice sad! I’ve been a madman half my life and a player in a farce the other half!”

“Be calm, Sir Knight, and look into the wonders of this place. Christ’s coming to earth to pardon its errings, right its wrongs, and hang unfading victory crowns on all futures. Listen: There was night when that King died, and the dead arose and went about the city, attesting the eternal fact that He was Ruler of all worlds. And it was the Feast of the New Moon at Jerusalem; the Feast of Venus at Rome; of Khem in Egypt; but the crescent was hidden.”

“I see, I see, Rhodes; Mary and Mary’s son were to come forth; all others eclipsed!”

“It is attested by history that there was black darkness about the Sun Temple at Heliopolis as Christ was bidding His mother and earth Death’s good-night. The Egyptian city of Osiris, by miracle, witnessed of the great event at Calvary. Some there were prompted to say: ‘Either the world is coming to an end, or the god of nature suffers.’”

“And Mary, wise and erudite, Rhodes? Tell us more of her.”

“‘It is finished!’ cried her son, and she passed from the grief of those who agonize amid somber, monster pangs impending, into that quiet, subdued, ripening sadness that comes over those who have learned to say: ‘Thy will be done.’ At Cana’s feast her Beloved told her: ‘Mine hour has not yet come.’ Now, she knew the meaning of the mystic words, and saw His hour, with all its mighty imports, at last marked in full; all the prophecies gathered as into a full-orbed sun; the cross rose like a dial, mountains high, the shadows on it telling eternity’s time! Mary, the singer of the ‘Magnificat,’ her imagination fired, her vision inspired, as she stood by that interpreting, ghastly symbol, could see the course of the sacred past emerging into meaning. Eve leading; the wealth of her bloom no longer sacrificed to primeval, Astarte-like intoxications; the wings of the real tree of life above her; the serpent crushed beneath her heel. Then, following, Noah, the man of the ark, symbol of sheltering covenants between God and man, covenants ever circled by bows of hope, ever surmounted by dove-like peace. After these Abraham, with his typical lamb, followed by a countless multitude of priests, laying down at the cross, as they passed, their temple-pattern, the symbols of its service realized and ellipsed! After these, Moses, the law-giver, with face serene at law’s fulfillment, in company with flaming prophets innumerable, all rejoicing in visions realized. Behind all followed Captivity and Hades, Christ’s grandest trophies, forever in chains! Teutonic Knight of St. Mary, thy queen saw all these, and as they passed there rose to her view the White Kingdom of David. Now, stand here where she stood; surrender mind and heart to the Spirit and Word, then thou shalt behold the radiant procession, the coming glory!”

The Hospitaler ceased. Then softly, meanwhile waving his hand as if entreating, Sir Charleroy spoke:

“Rhodes, wait a little; don’t say any more now. I want to watch that procession. It seems to me I see it. Oh, wonderful, all wonderful!”

“He shall be called Wonderful.”

There was a long, long pause, broken gently by Miriamne, who, after a while, said:

“We’d better return to the city; the day is very hot, and I’m—” She could say no more.

Silently Sir Charleroy complied; silently all three journeyed to their abodes. The Hospitaler was content with his effort to proclaim the truths of Calvary, and Miriamne was glad to leave her father to the full benefit of his sacred, all-engrossing thoughts. Miriamne, in heart, was enraptured by her thoughts of the mother of Jesus.

CHAPTER XXIX.
TWO DEAD HEARTS UNITING TWO LIVING ONES

Under Miriamne’s adroit and patient guidance Sir Charleroy and his attendants made goodly progress until they reached ancient Jabbock, bordering Giant Bashan; but at that point the knight made a stubborn stand, persisting that he would proceed no further Bozrah-ward.

“I smell Mohammedanism coming to me from the East, and, having had enough of the Saracens in my day, I’ll tarry away from their haunts——

“I must go, beloved, to the tomb of my dear defender, Ichabod. I must go to Gerash to do the pious offices of a mourner.”

The maiden brought forward every reason her ingenuity could invent opposed to the proposed deflection in course. She enlisted the Druses guides, whom she had employed to accompany them hitherto, to aid her in raising objections, and they magnified the obstacles in the way to Gerash with commendable loyalty to their employer, the maiden, if not with strict regard to truth. They all encamped, and the debate was the sole occupation for hours.

“Now, Miriamne, hitherto my good spirit, thou wouldst lure me to perdition! I’ve been in the Lejah. I’m certain that black lava-sea is hell’s mouth, and Bozrah’s its porch!”

“So be it; but if we go carrying the heavenly consciousness of doing our Father’s will, we may carry heaven to those gates.”

“It’s not my duty to go thither. I passed through that purgatory once. Its horrors blasted my life! To return thither would be presumption.”

“But you have forgotten the sunrise coming to you. Each day, for months, as you have journeyed eastward, you have gained in health of body and mind.”

“Dost thou mean that God blesses those who plunge headlong to destruction, as the possessed swine that ran violently into the sea?”

“Can not my father let faith silence the disquietings of his wild fancies? The memory of a past pain, though a persistent, is often a false teacher.”

“Oh, I do remember. Some memories seem to scorch the very substance of my brain! I pray when such come that God give me eternal forgetfulness. I’d rather be an idiot than have the power of coherent thinking filled with such reminiscences!”

“Ah, if we all, always, had the wisdom, while gazing into our dark, deep pools, to gaze until we saw at their bottoms the image of the sky above!”

“Well said, daughter! Bozrah is a dark pool! I saw there only an image of the sky, and that very far away!”

The day of the foregoing they were wandering along the flowery banks and over the forest-covered hills that undulated away from Jabbock’s ravine. As they moved along the maiden plucked a hyacinth blossom and affectionately fastened it on her father’s bosom; just where he was wont to wear, when in England, his knight’s cross.

“Rizpah once placed a lotus there; it made me drunk; a votary of pleasure, mad; but Miriamne, her daughter, places there the flower of serene, deathless affection! Sweet, thou art my good angel, the flower says to Gerash!”

“Why, father! I do not understand!”

“Apollo unwittingly caused the death of a beautiful youth, the friend of his heart, whose name was Hyacinthus. So says tradition, and it’s so charming, I more than half believe it! Apollo, in loyal love, made a flower grow from the grave of his friend. This is it! See; here’s the color of the dead youth’s blood. This blossom is the flower of deathless friendship and I love it.”

“A touching story, I’ll remember it; but it seems to me the flower says, ‘Bozrah,’ my father.”

“Take this leaf, girl; here.”

“And what of this?”

“There, on that leaf, behold those signs, ‘Ai’ ‘Ai’.”

“I think some markings are there like what you say, though never ’till now did I so trace them.”

“That’s the Greek cry of woe. The perfumes of these flowers, in every field of Gerash, remind me of my duty. I must go to the tomb of the man that died in my defense.”

“A pious sentiment; but duty to the living can not be pushed aside by such a call. You have other and living friends?”

“Yes, thou art my friend, lover, angel; but I’ll keep thee with me, my lamb.”

“Rizpah and your sons!”

“Rizpah my friend? that would be amusing, if it were not such a grim sarcasm. Oh, what a miserable race she led me!”

“Misery, like joy, in wedded life, is won or lost by the deed of two; not one. I shall not acquit my mother; but were not there two to blame?”

“Two? no; only one. I could not be peaceful with a panther.”

“Be not too severe, and think a little; did not you, after all, do much to make your wedded wife what she was at her worst?”

“What, I? Thou dost not think that?”

“Yes; I know the story of your espousal; your flight from Gerash, and then your after conflicts. You knew before you determined against all opposing, in the face of reasons most grave, and without any thought of your adaptation to each other, to wed, that your tempers, tastes, and trainings were in almost every thing apart.”

“Well, we loved each other sincerely; our marriage vows were honestly taken.”

“Marriage; that settled it forever! Did you as honestly keep as you took the vows, for better or worse?”

“Now that were impossible. Did you ever see your mother in rage, her muscles rising in a sort of serpentine wavings from her feet upward? Ugh! I hear her sibilant, hissing words of scorn, now. They’ll haunt me forever. She was a lotus in love, and a boa in wrath.”

“I may have seen her so, but out on the love that lets such visions displace memories of the best things; a daughter, nurtured by her, can not; a husband sworn on hymen’s altar, dare not forget.”

“I tried to set her right, Miriamne.”

“Not always with kindness unfailing. I’ve seen the scourge-marks on her heart. I’ve heard her moan as a wounded dove; no, more piteously, as a deserted wife and mother. You tried to set her right by forcing her to your faith, that, too, when the girl-wife was weak and exhausted by early maternity. You have been wont ever to pity profoundly the holy mother who recoiled fainting from the spectacle of her son scourged to crucifixion. That pity is a fine feeling; but since Mary’s day is passed, it is finer to evince a manly tenderness for living women moving toward their Calvary. How you waste your emotions on the dead! Mary Hyacinthus, Ichabod, have all, Rizpah nothing.”

“See here, daughter; let me look down into thy eyes. I’m of a mind to think the sun has gotten into thy brain. It gets into every body’s in this country.” So saying, he turned her face toward his own. It was a bungling effort on his part to parry her thrusts with ridicule, the last weapon of the defeated.

She was a little indignant, but yet too earnest to be diverted, and so followed up her advantage.

“You were the stronger, every way, and fenced well against your other self. The woman erred, sometimes grievously, perhaps, and you had your sweet retaliations. How sweet you can tell. Each blow at her, fell on me, my brothers and yourself. Oh, it’s the climax-revenge to lay open with giant thrusts, monstrous and keen, vein and nerve. One may mar a good purpose by pursuing it cruelly. Were not your efforts to set my mother right severe, sometimes?”

“Did the eloquent Hospitaler put these fine words together for thee, girl?” testily questioned Sir Charleroy.

“No matter who sent them, if they be true words. If you get angry, I’ll be wounded. You need not try hard to hurt me. I will strive to be all filial, while all loyal; but not more so to father than to mother.”

“Well, but she was a rheumatism to me.”

“So be it; still she was part of you. Does one dismember a limb that aches, or give it tenderer care than all others?”

“‘It is better,’ said Solomon, ‘to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.’ I got heartily weary of an ache that ached because it ached.”

“I’ll place Joseph by Solomon.”

“Pray, how?”

“He espoused Mary and was with her, yet apart; thus showing God’s idea of the needs of weary mothers in their trying hours, when giving their strength to another being. Joseph was kept as a lover only, until after Jesus was born, that his services might have a lover’s tenderness. I have heard that the manhood of Jesus reflected the sweetness of Mary; Joseph kept his wife in those days sweet, so the kindness of that noble spouse lived after all, an immortal influence. Joseph, through Mary in part, determined the bodily traits of the child Jesus; the latter influences all time.”

“Why, truly, thou hast found a beautiful flower, Miriamne, and I’m wondering that I never saw it before in Mary’s life. But, finally, I tell thee I loved Rizpah as my soul at first.”

“Oh, yes; you both loved with almost volcanic ardor. My mother told me so; but this very power and inclination of passionate loving gave you each for the other power of dreadfully hurting.”

“Well, we’ll speak further of this, perhaps, another time. The hyacinth lures me to Ichabod’s tomb.”

“The rose, emblem of Mary, flower of wedded love, is sweeter than the hyacinth. Go home to Bozrah, father, I beseech you, so you may prove yourself still a Knight of Saint Mary.”

“Home? I’ve none! Bozrah is grim ruins within, without. There, as only fit and in fit dwellings, abide the cormorant and hyena. All hopes that ever centred in that place for me were but dancing satyrs at the last; all loves but eagles with hot-iron beaks, which devoured the hearts that fed them, then fled away! I hate Bozrah!”

“You have a wife and children there. I a mother. Where the brood is, there is home. Bozrah has no gloom for us, save such as we make for it. It may be a glad place yet. Remember that Kidron and Golgotha were made all beautiful by the fidelity of Mary and the cross-bearing of Jesus.”

“Miriamne, this parley is useless. Once for all, hear me. Before I wed thy mother I took upon my soul an impious, almost desperate, vow, that I’d possess her though the possessing ruined me. The strong, hopeful Knight of the Cross was domineered over by his love. Before this I had some commendable principles and a little piety. What am I now, after long driftings about through wasted years of prime? I’m the wreck of a man; less! a part of a wreck, trying to get made over in a meaner pattern out of the fragments left. Thy mother unmade me!”

“Adam said something like that of Eve.”

“Don’t interrupt me, Miriamne. The Jewish maiden Zainab gave Mohammed, of Bozrah, the poisoned lamp which ruined his health; the Jewish Rizpah has such a lamp. See me, wrinkled, hair whitened, all too soon; chivalry, morality and piety dragged out of me bit by bit. I stand here the caricature of what I was or what I should be. I’m fit for neither war nor courtship. I’d make a pretty show attempting to court Rizpah! I’ve forgotten how such things are done, and, besides, I’m not the original Sir Charleroy she wed. Let her find him, or his counterfeit, and be happy. The original Sir Charleroy and Rizpah loved each other desperately, but these that I know hate each other as desperately. I tell thee it would be legalized adultery for these latter two to live under the same roof, pleading as justification the vows of the other two! Miriamne, I tell thee that thou mayst tell it on the house tops, or hill tops, as I’ll cry it through eternity, if permitted, Sir Charleroy and Rizpah, of Gerash and Bozrah, died long ago! The devil stole their bodies, put an imp’s spirit in each, and then parted them forever. If they ever meet it will be by the fiend’s device, that he may revel over their warrings with each other! Ah, ha! What the Roman arena was to the blood-thirsty populace, such to the fiends the homes of the world when full of tumults!”

And Miriamne, alarmed by the outbreak, tried to calm her father:

“Oh, father, you will need mercy some day; merit it by bestowing it. You suffer an unforgiving spirit to inflame your passion!”

“Forgiving? What’s the use? I’ve vainly tried mercy!”

“Try once more. The injured have resource so long as they have power to forgive. Remember Him who in the great extremity cried: ‘They know not what they do!’ Trust Rizpah once more!”

“I do not see the shadow of a peg on which to hang a trust.”

“You, a Teutonic Knight of St. Mary!”

“Thank God Mary was not a Rizpah!”

“Mary had the trust of Joseph in those dire days, when nothing but a miracle could prove her integrity. She presents not only woman’s goodness but that which even the loftiest wife needs, the constancy beyond measure of her husband.”

“Joseph was advised by an angel. I not.”

“As you love your mother, honor the woman who mothers your children. They bear your image, yet she alone, with a sublime self-forgetting, struggles to have them grow up honorably, purely, and in the fear of God.”

“She wants to make them Israelites.”

“Perhaps so, and perhaps the Christian examples she has seen give her no reason to wish otherwise. But after all, her way is better than to have left them as their father left them, to become infidels or nothing. Oh, father, do not think me bold. I speak because I love you; as perhaps no other might care or presume to give utterance.”

“Well, girl, I guess I’m a double man; for, determined to oppose, I feel a desire within to have thee win in this argument. I’m one compound of contradictions. I was a sworn bachelor, then a sworn husband, now I’m neither. I’m a widower, with a living wife; a parent of three children with only one. I bewail my homelessness, yet run from an offered home. I confess to being useless, yet see a mission most important at my own door. Swearing loyalty to Mary, I disregard all she exemplified—of late revealed to me; professing to be a Christian, I live a life that would shame a decent Jew. I have a daughter, said by all to be much like me in temper, feature, and mind, yet we are here utterly opposed in thought and purpose. I’ve heard the profoundest teachers in grandest temples unmoved to this duty, to-day presented; and, now, without the pale of any church, in the wilds of Jericho, a mere girl, my daughter, instructs me well! This all proves that I’m the caricature of Miriamne’s father. If I be Sir Charleroy, then I’m beside myself!”

“A good half confession! Now for the atonement!”

“What, a bundle of contradictions making atonement? undoing the past! more contradictions?”

“Righteousness displaces all the contradictions of life!”

“I could make no atonement except by contradicting a score of years, and going to Bozrah! Now hear me finally; by the glory of God, alive, I’ll never go to Rizpah’s house!”

Miriamne felt that further persuasion would be futile. She made a last request, then.

“Will my father take me to the outskirts of that city? I’ll enter alone to comfort the woman who, notwithstanding her faults, I believe to be the noblest of mothers. She may not have a husband; she has a daughter.”

As the father and daughter rested at noon, not far from the Giant City, some days after the foregoing events, they beheld a single horseman from toward Bozrah speeding along the great southern highway.

“I think he’s a Jew and in peaceful pursuit. I’ll hail him,” said the knight, “in the language of Galilee.”

The rider, hearing the call, halted. Glancing about him he discovered the source of the call, and promptly reined his steed toward where the pilgrims were sitting. Instantly he began in short, quick sentences:

“Wonder; the face of a Frank, the garb of a Turk, the voice of a Jew! An old man, a young woman! A Moslem in company with his slave? No, she sits by his side! A harem favorite? No! She is not veiled! Ye do not look cunning enough for magicians, too cunning to be pilgrims; not pious enough, old man, to be a priest, and too pious-looking to be a robber.”

“True, Laconic,” said the knight, “I’m at no loss as to thee.”

“So it seems! But pray, Christian, Jewish, Druses, Turks, who are ye?”

“We’re pilgrims, good runner.”

“Ha, ha; these pilgrims are a mad-lot, with piebald customs!”

“What news, runner?”

“What news! A plague in Bozrah! De Griffin’s twins are nigh to death—De Griffin? May be thou knowest him? Thou dost look like him: but he’s dead. Now his twins have no nurses nor mourners, but Rizpah, and I’m racing to Gerash to see if I can find a soul to swell her wailings.”

The rider turned his horse and with a word, “Selamet,”—“peace,” was gone.

Miriamne had heard enough, and now, with redoubled vehemence, reöpened her arguments and appeals to her father to go to her home.

“I’ll not go into Rizpah’s house. I tell thee thou art inviting me into hell!”

Miriamne, in turn, replied: “There is good anywhere for those that earnestly seek it. Mohammed, they say, got his first inspiration in Bozrah, and he a Moslem, a crescent devotee!”

“Yes; he wed a rich wife there, too, and she was a saint. I may envy him in these things.”

The young woman hastily entered the city and stopped for a little time at the mission house of Father Adolphus, briefly, hurriedly, to announce her return, inquire the latest report concerning the illness of her brothers, and to beseech the old priest to go out after her father; if possible, to bring him into the city and to the desolate fireside.

“Well, well; there, now, I’d call thee bee or humming-bird, truly, darting from point to point, subject to subject, if I didn’t know I was talking to an angel.”

The sincere compliment was unheard by Miriamne, for she was gone ere it was sounded. The old man shaded his eyes, looked after her a few moments, then girding himself, hobbled down the street to seek at the city’s outskirt the waiting knight.

And Miriamne, with heart beating high, sped on homeward. But as she approached it she slackened her pace, with questionings as to how she had best enter, so as to secure loving welcome and in no wise perturb by sudden surprise. She saw her mother through the doorway, bowed and swinging back and forth. The girl’s heart divined all; “My brothers are dead!” The mother seemed oblivious to all about her, and Miriamne hesitated on the threshold. Just then the runner galloped up to the open door, reined his steed, and exclaimed: “Out of sight, out of mind! Death, like poverty, sifts our friends! Ye can hire mourners cheaper at Bozrah than at Gerash, and there are none to be had without coins! Gerash is distant. I had no coins, and was a fool to start, wise to return!” It was Laconic, and he was gone before any reply was given. Rizpah didn’t even lift up her head to notice his coming or going.

Miriamne was glad of the circumstance, for the runner gave her words with which to enter: “A daughter never forsakes.” She spoke thus, very softly.

Rizpah, perhaps not recognizing the voice, moaned on, swaying as she moaned:

“Mother, mother?”

Rizpah slowly lifted her eyes to the speaker; then, either by a masterful self-control or because sorrow dazed, she slowly and without emotion, addressed the maiden:

“Thou here? So, then, my three are safe together, before my eyes, in death. Thou wert buried years ago.”

Without another word the daughter and sister quietly moved to the forms lying beside the mother, and knelt down, bowing, her one arm flung over the corses. Presently she reached out her hand and it met a warm clasp from her mother. The maiden knew full well that it meant welcome. It was death’s victory; expressive, unspoken eloquence. There were four hearts; two still in death; two alive and breaking, but the dead hearts somehow drew the living ones together and then they beat as one, each all comforting to the other. Two dead hearts bridged the gulf between two living ones. There followed the embrace and kiss of peace, and then Rizpah questioned:

“Wilt stay with me a little while, my only—?” thereupon she sobbed and was relieved.

“Stay? Yes, always! But when, the burial?”

“At once! It’s the plague and the law requires promptness. O Death, thou didst do thy bitterest for Rizpah!”

Rizpah soon rose up and began to busy herself about the bodies.

“Mother, tell me how to aid you.”

“Yea, as I need. Thou and I wilt carry them to the cave of entombment.”

“But will there be no funeral rites?”

“I’ll perform such; keeping vigil as Rizpah of old. My children were crucified, as were hers. All mankind turned from us in our stress, and so they died in want.”

“But, mother, the watching would kill you!”

“Thou dost comfort me, now. Oh, I’d be overjoyed, if I only knew for certainty that death would court me at my vigil.”

Softly Miriamne spoke:

“Sir Charleroy is at Bozrah.”

“Now thou makest Bozrah seem afar. Oh, the garments of people may brush together passing, but still to all things else the passers be eternities apart,” replied quickly, and yet with cool self-possession, Rizpah.

“Death, that cools the pulses, also subdues the asperities. I could not hate an enemy if I met him amid his dead,” persuasively responded the maiden.

“Imperious, fanatical, stubborn Charleroy! changeable in all but his determination to make conquest of the faith of others. Then, I can not ask his pardon for my serving God. Liberty came to Egypt because the mothers of captive Israel were faithful. So says our Talmud.”

“Sir Charleroy respects at least, fidelity.”

“Then ’tis well to have me die. He never did me justice to my face; let him embalm me in honey after I’m dead, as Herod did the wife he murdered. It’s a way of some husbands. But we must be moving, daughter; I’ve prepared two biers. The plague is a stern messenger, nor leaves room for any dallying.”

And Bozrah witnessed a strange, sad spectacle. Two roughly constructed burial couches; on each a body, and two women, the one aged, the other youthful, both bowed with grief, slowly bearing the biers away, down to the tomb-hill. The elder directed; and so they went; first a little way forward with one body, then returning to advance the other. There were no mourners following; the passers-by offered no help; the women of the city drew their doors shut, and the children playing in the streets, when they beheld this funeral procession, fled away with subdued exclamations.

The ancient Rizpah, watching her dead on their crosses, was standing that time in her valley of “dry bones;” her imitator, Rizpah de Griffin, was now walking through that same valley. Both made pitiable by desolation. Neither was able to hide her dead from her sight by looking for the hope of the blessed resurrection. Their loving had been fierce enough, but the soul-reviving Spirit of the prophet’s vision was not yet seen to be in the valley for them. The two Rizpahs were “mothers of sorrow,” but followed no cross that had on it besides “death,” “victory.” They went with tears, but not held by a love that triumphs in “leading captivity captive.” These ancient Jewish mothers may be put in striking contrast with the Davidic Queen Mary, who wept from the Judgment Hall, past the cross, past the tomb, up to the chamber of Pentecost, from which she viewed the transports of the Ascension of her Son, her Saviour, her King.