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

Another Easter, to some the brightest yet, smiled in Bozrah, and Miriamne was at the Christian Chapel.

Father Adolphus, after serious, tender greeting, questioned:

“I wonder thy father came not to-day?”

“Oh, he’s celebrating the resurrection of love, joy, and peace, at home. You often told me these were the realities of Christ’s rising.”

“Thy joy in this must reach all fullness?”

“I don’t know, I’m in a strange way—very happy, yet very restless.”

“I have seen souls before at their noon; hast thou not observed how the air seems to tremble sometimes at midday? This is not fear but fullness.”

“Oh, my shepherd, I’m not at noon yet, only dawn. I’ve only begun my work.”

“Has our missionary Cupid other couples at odds to reunite?”

“Perhaps so; but whether God calls me to such work or not, this much I know, He has put a burden on me.”

“Will Miriamne confide it to me—or has the lover dethroned the priest?”

“There now, never say that again! None on earth can dethrone in my heart my constant friend and guide; yea under God, my savior! Had there been no Father Adolphus there would have been no lover; at least no Christian Cornelius, as my heart’s lord.”

“I fear Miriamne in her generous desire to cheer a tired old man flatters.”

“No; not flattery, but just award. As the ancient captives on their return to their own Israel gave their wealth to provide crowns for their priests, so do I to-day offer the finest gold of my heart to the man who piloted me with purity, patience, and wisdom, along and over perilous ways, to happiness beyond all words to express.”

The old missionary’s face expressed the wondrous comfort he felt in the words of his convert.

“And what is it that burdens thee, daughter?”

“I hope my pastor will not be offended, but I’m burdened by the slow dawning of religious day. Why does it take so long to convert the earth?”

“The zeal of the young convert fills thee!”

“Ah, but that trite answer, defense of the slow progress of true or false creed, after all does not answer. I feel those Easter services at times lifting me up, out of and beyond myself, out of all thought of my own final glory, and to anxiety for a lost Israel, a lost world! I think, at times, I comprehend what was meant by the descent to the grave, the captivity of death, the triumphal ascent, and then I wonder and doubt.”

“Wonder and doubt?”

“Yes; I wonder at the grandeur of all that the resurrection implies, and seeing it unrealized I doubt whether my interpretation of it be the right one. Worse than that, I’m pained by darker doubts. Forgive me, but my poor soul sometimes questions whether or not God has grown weary or failed to keep His promises. Oh, these doubts pain me to my heart’s core, but they will come! I see day by day on every hand such widespread gloom; not only that very few walk in the light, but how many shadows fall on those who profess to have entered the light of the Rising?”

“Alas, day drags wearily!” slowly responded the priest.

“Yes; the centuries since Calvary, filled with misery, ignorance, and sin, seem to me to have rebuke in them to all who saw, from time to time, the Gospel light, and imperious urgency for those who see it now.”

“But the church is doing its best to get onward, Miriamne.”

“That I doubt, though I’d fear to be heretical.”

“Again, I do not comprehend thee, girl.”

“That’s it; I do not comprehend myself, or what it is that I’m stirred to be or do. I think that there’s a reason for sadness at Easter time. It is the reminder of a great hope unfulfilled. Over twelve hundred years have passed away since Christ arose, typical of the rising of mankind by faith to all that was noble and blissful, and yet we are all in the dim twilight of the morning. Oh, my teacher, it seems to me as if a funeral chord went weeping through every Easter anthem.”

The old priest sat silently for a time, then bowed his head and wearily sighed; “I have done my best any way!”

“Oh, do not think I doubt that! No, no; I’d not hint a rebuke of my noble guide; but I can’t make you understand me! Nobody seems to grasp my meaning! Yet of this I’m certain, I want to do something differing from what has been; something great, revolutionary, for the world, for Christ.”

“All reforms are revolutionary; all consecration to noble work, noble.”

“I suppose I express myself as vaguely as other Christians, whose efforts are chiefly words. But why is it that there can not be a presentment of Divine truth in such a simple and attractive form as to make all hearing and seeing love it? Why is it that the followers of truth separate into armies, not only not sympathizing with, but opposing each other? Why do not all having a common Father and one Saviour, join as one loving family to bear aloft the banner of the Invincible?”

“That day will come in God’s good time.”

“Oh, again forgive me; but that trite apology for the delayed dawn seems to me to fling the blame on God in order to palliate man’s indifference.”

“Miriamne, thou art thoughtful beyond thy years, but what wouldst thou have?”

“Some one to show me how, and when, and where to proclaim a revolution! There is need that Israel believe; that one half the race, its women, be crowned with its full privileges and powers; that Christian humanity check war, banish poverty and bring in universal justice.”

“Revolutionist, indeed; though a blessed one art thou!”

“So I’m often told; but who will show me how to work for such ends!”

“Hast thou among thy knightly companionships heard of the Grail knights?”

“I’ve heard of them; but not a great deal. Why ask?”

“Thou art like them.”

“I’m glad to know whom I’m like; tell me of them that I may know myself.”

“They, as their life work, and with charming enthusiasm, sought an object pure and noble, but which none but they themselves could see.”

“Did they obtain their object and do much good?”

“They were a blessing to the world; but sometimes, like others seeking lofty ends, they failed. Eternity alone can estimate their work and worth.”

“Where are they now?”

“Their successors are like thee. That grail guild of old is now no more.”

“Tell me all about them and the Grail!”

“Listen. Joseph of Arimathæa, he that secretly followed the Lord in his lifetime, and openly, after he saw the glory of His crucifixion, is said to have caught the blood that flowed from the speared side in the paschal vessel or cup used at the last supper. There is a cathedral in Glastonbury, England, which once I saw, erected on the place where Joseph builded a little wicker oratory, when there as a missionary. At least they say he once was there. The aged Joseph died and the Grail or Passion cup passed into the custody of other holy men. Finally a custodian of it sinned, and thereupon it was caught away quickly to heaven. But there is a legend that it is brought, from time to time, to earth, only to be seen by those that are pure—virgin men and women. Then out of the yearnings for the cup’s presence (for it is said it gave unutterable joy as well as miraculous healings to any that came nigh to it), an order of knights sprung up, to seek it, everywhere in earth. They were sworn not to disclose their mission, and bound, as their only hope of success, to keep their hearts noble and pure.”

“But how am I like a ‘grail knight?’”

“Miriamne pursues a heavenly cure for human ills, a something she cannot see nor quite explain.”

“’Tis true and wonderful.”

“The ‘grail’ story is almost as old as man, being shaped out of other most ancient pilgrim quests. All noble hearts yearn for a healer and ideal.”

“Perhaps the time has come for a woman crusade, a new order of grail seekers?”

“Indeed, I think as much; and Miriamne, taking Mary as her model, may be the very one to proclaim it.”

“But being a woman, and so young, I might be ridiculed as an enthusiast, as brazen, perhaps, or worse, if I attempted such things.”

“If thou didst undertake any thing truly good, thou wouldst best know its goodness by the bitterness of its opposing. The cross is very bright on one side, on the other it casts shadows. Walking toward it we walk in those chastening shadows. But when we’ve passed the grave, which it ever guards, there is light, all light—not before.”

“Sometimes I think I’m a very womanish woman and not the stuff of which the heroine can be made.”

“To be a woman is to have within thee a wealth of power. To be queenly is to do in queenly spirit the work falling to thy lot. Behold the queenly women of the patriarchs! Rebecca watered the flocks, Rachel was a shepherdess. The daughter of Jethro, King of Midian, also kept the flocks; and Tamar baked bread. The Word of God records these things, methinks, to show in what a queenly way a queenly woman may perform a seemingly unimportant work. Doing humble works well, they had their honor in due time. Think of our Mary, Mother of Jesus, after her call, serving humbly as a good housewife to a carpenter.”

“Oh, if I could only catch the flavor of her life more fully!”

“A worthy wish! Her life was a sermon on faith. Called of God to bring forth Immanuel, she accepted the trust with joyful humility, leaving the miraculous performance to the Promiser. For thirty years, from Bethlehem’s cradle to Bethabara, where Her Son was owned of God, she bore her pains and toils, facing persecutions, the leers and slanderous innuendoes of the rabble, all without faltering. Only wondrous faith kept her gentle young heart from breaking! I think she carried the cross all along the course of Christ’s life—until He Himself took it. She wrought out her work as a satellite of her son, and yet as a poem most eloquent, voicing thoughts without which some of His wondrous, greater life would lack explanation.”

“I fain would be like her, but then to be so seems beyond my capacities.”

“If thou canst not be a satellite of the Sun as Mary, be a satellite of a satellite. Reflect her, and it will be well, since she reflected Him. ’Tis a simple lesson, but profitable; learn it; there is greatness in little things; regarding them we may at the same time lay hold of that that is great. I’d have all women heroines by teaching them what heroism is.”

“Was Mary learned? She had to meet some grand company?”

“Wise, as thou mayst be in the solid culture of God’s word.”

“But I can never be a Mary,” presently the maiden murmured.

“Thou canst be thyself, and what thou canst. A seraph could be no more. God needed for his lofty purpose but one like the Maiden of Nazareth, and for thy comfort remember Mary could not have been the mother of Jesus and Miriamne de Griffin of Bozrah also. She had her mission, thou thine; it is a judgment of God to attempt to say that each in her station was not and is not placed in the way most excellent.”

Their converse ended but to be renewed. At frequent intervals Miriamne advised with her guide upon the subject uppermost in her mind, and more and more became endued with the spirit of the missionary. To all questionings within herself, as to how she might compass her lofty and philanthropic designs, there came but one answer, “To Jerusalem!” It seemed to her that there, at the heart of Syrian life, she might obtain inspiration and wisdom, as well as the widest possible opportunity of applying these for others. To her to believe was to act, and so she soon had completed all her arrangements to join a band of pilgrims passing by way of Bozrah toward the great city. The parting was painful to mother and daughter, and unlike any they had experienced before. The daughter felt a misgiving. Her mother was aged. The tensions of trial and responsibility being removed so largely from the life of the latter by recent events, left her spiritless. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in the days of excitement and conflict she exerted herself beyond her ability; now, when the motive was gone, nature proclaimed its premature exhaustion. Miriamne was convinced that she would be motherless ere long, and was haunted by misgivings as to ever again seeing her if she left Bozrah. Rizpah herself, though she feared that the present separation and farewell were to be final, urged her child tenderly, earnestly, to go forward as conscience dictated. The parting between these two women was secret, they two being alone. It was affectionate and most tender, and yet cheered by the mutual hope both expressed of an eternal reunion after death. The eventful day and the supreme moment came to find Miriamne and her mother nerved for the parting. That was soon over, and the maiden moved out of the old stone home toward the white camel already caparisoned for her use. Father Adolphus and Sir Charleroy awaited her by its side, having repeated, over and over, to the maiden’s chosen attendant a score of directions, and having in the fussiness of nervousness again and again examined bridle and girt and hamper. The maiden, glancing after the caravan of pilgrims which was to be her convoy, now slowly passing out of the city, turned toward her father to say the last words of parting. She began: “And now, dear father.” Her voice, tremulous to begin with, broke down.

“There, Miriamne,” interrupted the knight, “wait, we’ll accompany thee a little distance.” The three moved out of the city together, the attendant riding on before them. They were all too sorrowful to speak cheerfully, so each said nothing. On the crest of a hillock the old priest paused; simultaneously the father and daughter did likewise. “I’m too weary to go further,” spoke the priest. Miriamne’s eyes filled with tears, and Sir Charleroy, drawing close to the maiden, turned his eyes away. He stood in silence gazing afar, but at nothing. Each at the last seemed to dread to be the first to speak that one word so inexpressibly sad when believed to be about to be spoken as a last “farewell.” The silence became oppressive, and then Father Adolphus murmured, “I suppose we must bid thee adieu, now.” Sir Charleroy shuddered and drew his turban down over his eyes.

Just then all the child and all the woman in Miriamne’s nature was awakened. Her feelings well nigh over-mastered her, and she exclaimed: “Oh, Bozrah, how can I leave thee and thy dear ones!” Bozrah to her meant home; for a moment her world seemed centred there. The old priest, ever adroit in ministering comfort, sought to divert the thoughts of those about him from needless pain, and so shading his eyes looked steadily eastward for a few moments. Then he questioned: “Daughter, canst thou see Salchad, at the Crater’s Mouth. I can not see it for my sight faileth; but I know ’tis yonder.” Miriamne followed the direction of the priest’s pointing hand, though she knew full well without directing, where the grim fortress city lay. Habit had made it natural to follow the guidance of that old, trembling hand. Some way, it helped her; she seemed better to understand what she already partly knew, when it directed.

“Yes, I see it. It is there; changeless and dreary as ever. But why this question?”

“Dost thou observe how the prospect fades away south of it, until it reaches the spreading desert?”

“Yes, I perceive!”

“Turn to the north, what object is most striking?”

“Oh, Hermon! ‘The old-man mountain;’ the sun makes its snowy-top appear to-day very like the white on an old man’s head and chin.”

Sir Charleroy’s attention was recalled from his contemplation of the pain of parting for an instant, and he questioned:

“Canst thou see aught of the ruins of the ‘Temple of the Sun,’ said to be at Hermon’s crest?”

But before an answer could be given to the knight’s question, Father Adolphus exclaimed: “Daughter, look back again to ruined Salchad! Beyond its ‘war tower of giants,’ there lies only the desert. Now turn thy back on it all forever, without repinings. Leave the desert and the war tower of the giants to the wandering Bedouin.”

“And then what?”

“Turn thy face toward Jerusalem, thy back to the drear desert—”

The maiden almost involuntarily complied, and the priest continued:

“Go forward with Hermon on thy right. Remember that the temple of the Fire Worshipers is overturned, its altars cold; but more remember that on Hermon humanity was transfigured in answer to prayer.”

“And so my shepherd and guide would promise me blessing and bid me God speed?” quoth the maiden.

“Thou read’st my heart, daughter.”

“The same true heart; it never gets old or weary of cheering.”

“I’m made grateful and happy, daughter, by thy words. He that saith, ‘Let not your hearts be troubled!’ and ‘comfort ye, comfort ye my people,’ is my leader. For cheering, I was called.”

“How noble such a call seems to me, now.”

“Yea; daughter, if one can not be as the stars that fought in their course for Sisera, he may be as a summer evening’s breeze, in cooling pain’s fevers, and in drying the tears from cheeks that blush through the rains of weeping times.”

Gently, firmly she guided her camel from the hillock, on which it was feeding, toward the highway, along which the caravan was departing. “We must be going now.”

At her words, Sir Charleroy and the old Sacrist each caught one of her hands.

“Oh, my fathers!” was her pitying but not pitiable exclamation. Sir Charleroy, standing on the hillock, by the camel, on which his daughter was mounted, drew the hand he held close to his heart, then his arm tenderly encircled its owner. The maiden’s head rested upon the breast that had often borne her since babyhood, her lips met in unfeigned tenderness those of the man who not only loved her as a daughter, but as his good angel, almost savior. It was a scene for a painter; the past and the present, sunset and morning; the one looking back in a confessed ineffectiveness of a life nearly spent, in contrast with a fresh, young, hopeful life, before which lay a world to be conquered. Miriamne, the called leader in a new crusade for women, for humanity, was bidding farewell to the ruins of giant land, and to a representative of the last of the sworded-crusaders.

Her staff fell on the side of the beast that bore her and it moved away quickly after the departing troop.

The parting was over, and yet the two old men silently lingered at the place of the farewell. Once or twice the maiden looked back to them, as she was borne forward, to wave an adieu. The lone watchers followed her with their eyes, until her white camel appeared but a speck moving along at the skirt of a column of dust. The eyes of the watchers dimmed by years, now supplemented by tears, presently could discern only dust. She was buried from their view forever. Then they silently returned to the city, each busy with his own thoughts. Thereafter there was a heavy loneliness on all hearts in that Bozrah circle. The priest moved about his chapel, and the parents about their home as though an angel of light had gone from their midst, or as if the angel of death had come among them.

“It seems strange like,” said the Sacrist’s sister, “to let a girl go away to that far-off city, among strangers, and about such meaningless purposes.”

“Never mind; never mind, sister, God’s lambs are ever safe. Her mission is clear to her, at least, and she’ll not be among strangers. The knights who secretly abide in the city of God have a charge concerning her in letters I’ve sent them. As well, Cornelius, her betrothed, is there. Pure love will be her wall of fire.” Thus ended all arguments and misgivings.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE HOSPITALER’S ORATION.

The daughter of Sir Charleroy found a home and a mother with Dorothea Woelfkin, the widowed parent of her affianced. What manner of woman the latter was may be readily inferred from the character of her beloved and only son, Cornelius. It sufficeth to say, mother and son were in all things wonderfully alike.

“Miriamne, I’ve called to ask, if we get the consent of my mother, that you attend a conclave of knights, to be secretly held, after Moslem prayers this evening.”

“Where?”

“At the house of the Christian sister, aged Phebe; just by the second wall of the city.”

“And why do they meet?”

“An eloquent Hospitaler, lately returned from a long mission, is to address the companions and their friends.”

“A Hospitaler; what’s his name?”

“Ah, there it is; the question all ask, and none can answer! He has given full tokens of his right to confidence, but declines, for reasons which he says are most pious, to reveal himself further than that he is a Knight Hospitaler of Rhodes.”

“Rhodes? Is he very tall, of piercing eyes, his hair long and jet, with streaks of gray?”

“Even so.”

“My father knew such a man, whom he called ‘silver-tongued.’”

“This man is as eloquent as Apollos.”

“We met such an one, and were with him for a time. We left him here, on our journey from Acre to Bozrah.”

“Did you penetrate his secret?”

“I did not, though my father once said to him ‘Grail.’ After that he kept aloof from us.”

“A proof it must be as I’ve suspected; the Hospitaler is one of the new Grail-Knights!” exclaimed Cornelius.

“And he is here? I must hear him again. The words he spoke to me in Gethsemane have followed me night and day since. He made the journey of Mary and Christ, by way of Kedron, to the cross, seem like a present reality; a path typical of the one before every child of God. I saw it all then, but have been unable since to find it. Oh, I burn with desire to have the ‘silver-tongued’ guide me to that pathway again.”

At the appointed time the twain sought the house of Christian Phebe, and found it wrapped in gloom; the only sign of life without being a man garbed as a camel driver, standing guard at the door. Cornelius whispered to Miriamne, “He’s a knight—the warden.” The young man gave the watchman a secret signal; the latter communicated through a little gated window, with those within, and quickly the door swung open, admitting Woelfkin and his companion. Within were light and cheerfulness contrasting with the gloom without. A goodly company was already assembled, chiefly made up of Crusaders, but now unharnessed. The faces of the pilgrim soldiers betokened a change within. They betokened spirits subdued, but not crushed; hearts having surrendered ambition for devastating conquest, to welcome a finer hope. There were few things about the place suggestive of war, and many suggestive of peace. At one end of the room stood a desk, in shape much like an altar. It was draped with a Templar banner, and to its side were fastened a sword, bent in the shape of a sickle, and two spears forming a cross, supporting a cup; the latter was in form the same as the cup of the Passion.

“There is something about this place that recalls the chapel of the Palestineans, in London, Cornelius.”

“Well, you and I were there; now we are here. In that the two places have likeness,” pleasantly responded the maiden’s escort.

Miriamne’s eyes wandered from object to object, as if seeking proof of, her assertion, and her companion followed her gaze with a glance about the place, which finally rested, as his glances were wont, on the eyes of Miriamne.

“Oh, the devoutness, the peace, the fellowship!” she exclaimed.

Just then there was a movement: a number of the men present arose; a hailing sign, significant to the initiated, was given by some, while simultaneously a slight applause passed around the room:

“’Tis he,” whispered Miriamne.

“Your Hospitaler?”

“Yes.”

The knights all stood and sang in subdued voices, a psalm of hope. “The movement of the melody suggests pilgrims climbing a hill.” At least, so the maiden said its movement seemed to her.

When the psalm was finished, the knights resumed their seats and the Hospitaler, without preliminary, at once addressed them:

“Knights of Christ, few and often in hiding, I would remind ye that no plan of God is futile, and that His cause has no backward movement.

“A dream of conquest, restoration and glory came over all followers of the cross. The dream had within it a hope of a holy land in Christian possession, and all the children of earth getting from it the story of the true faith. Then there was to come, we believed, the golden age, in which all mankind in sweet charity’s glorious fellowship should go forward.

“Nature, man’s mother, prays in a million mournful voices for that golden day; and God, man’s eternal and loving Father, works by countless invincible agencies to cause its full dawning. We Crusaders gave our lives by thousands for our faith, but we seemed to have done little beside change the name of this land from Philistine to Palestine. One, to be sure, is softer to the ear than the other, but to the heart both names bring the same miserable thoughts. Yet there was more than this attained. Ye remember how our cavalier soldiers expressed their chivalric impulses in honoring that queen of women, Our Lady? Like the rising of sun at midnight, came the conviction to Christian Europe when at its worst, socially, that reform must begin by purifying the homes of the people, by exalting all home life. To do this, the mothers who bare and nurture the fruits of the home, as well as making them for weal or for woe what they are, must needs be exalted by right as well as by fitness to their queenship. Every knight’s praise of Mary was an avowal of faith; his faith that woman could be, should be, what his imagination pictured Mary to have been.

“The knightly Christians were among the first to be moved by the belief that that was a monstrous blight, a heresy toward God and nature which regarded the finer sex as necessities or luxuries. Impressed by reverence for Mary, the banded soldiers of the cross began to feel their mission to be not only the recovery of the dead, but also of the living from infidel dominion; hence, each Crusade banner came as a sunburst to those, who, under the spell of gross passion, were enslaving their natural co-partners.

“Men, while the harem ideal stands, while woman is impotent because uncrowned, our lofty hopes can not bear fruit nor will our labors be ended!”

The speaker was interrupted by a murmur of applause that ran around the circle of auditors.

Miriamne glowed with delight, and raised her hand impressively and nodded toward Cornelius. He only saw the motion and easily interpreted it as meaning, “There, that’s what I felt, but could not express.”

The speaker continued: “God said it is not good that the man should be alone; time that resolves all mysteries, and experience which transmutes to gold all the rubbish of guess and experiment, has irrevocably declared that man cannot be to his fullness, in a state of solitary grandeur. He and the woman go up or down together; and, whether a seraph or a serpent leads her, the man by inclination or by force is sure to follow her footsteps.

“We Crusaders had a glimpse of the truth, but lost it to follow an ignis fatuus. Yet, in this land, we confronted the harem with the home ruled by one queenly wife and mother. The world, beholding the contrast begins to believe, as never before, in the supremacy, over all institutions, of that one where, under Eden’s covenant charters, purity and mother-love mold the race in the name of sole and patient love. The Saracens paraded their houris, their concubines, and their slaves as the proofs of their prowess; but the Christians challenged the array by the quality of their possessions, commencing with their women of God’s blood royal, and ascending to each revered personage, from love’s companions, to Mary, to Jesus. He that nobly deals with the one by his side will find her putting on a glory that will brighten the luster of his kingliness, and bringing forth to him those having the power to grasp and mold the destinies of coming years. Listeners, mark me; there is a lesson profound in the record of the strugglings with each other of Rebecca’s twins before their birth. Indeed, each being begins his career within the life that gives him life.

“Who will say, with assurance, that all of life lies within the reach of any man of himself? Nay, be it said, rather, that she who first carries, then leads, then inspires, as she only can, her sons and daughters, is the one who lays her gentle hands, with resistless power, upon the keys of all futures. It is the mother who impresses the prophecy of what is to be on the heart of the infant, before the event finds place upon the deathless page which records deeds done.”

Again applause interrupted.

The Hospitaler continued, as attention was given anew:

“That profoundest of ancient teachers, Plato, enunciated at least a half-truth or truth’s shadow, in his doctrine of the preëxistence of souls, though, as our church understands it, it pronounces the teaching heretical. Be that as it may, this much assuredly is true: if each man has not been on earth before, his present existence being the repetition of a prior one, his intuitions, vague recollections out of a past forgotten in a former death, surely there is none who is not the fruit of his parents. He is largely what they made him, and of the twain that beget, I affirm that the mother wields the ruling influence in the life and character of the begotten. I believe men perpetuate their worst traits through their posterity, easily and more persistently than do women theirs. In the giant of the human pair brawn and muscle predominate, and these, if depraved, feed every evil passion, giving each power to run with virulence from sire to son. The woman, formed by finer conceptions to be an angel, may fall to sinning and let weakness take the place of gentleness. So be it; yet even then her weaknesses and her sinnings, constantly repugnant to her nature as God framed it, antagonistic to the refinement that is native, ebb and die along the shores of her being’s course. She more naturally and more forcefully transmits her good than she does her evil, as a general rule. They have in fable-lore a tradition that the mythical goddess of love, Venus, wore a resplendent girdle, the sight of which made every beholder love the wearer. Let me give present force to the legend by affirming that every true woman, girded with the virtues that it is her duty and her privilege to wear, is an object, among all earthly beings, superlatively, entrancingly beautiful—next after Christ, God’s best gift to man.”

Cornelius now plucked the corner of Miriamne’s pepulum. It was a lover’s restless, questioning act. Being a man, trained as men, he was naturally inclined to doubt the speaker and to join in secret ridicule, that substitute for gainsaying when arguments are utterly lacking; but being a lover, he was so far doubtful as to his old creeds concerning women, as to be ready to be led. Miriamne turned toward her lover with a smile lightened by eyes which glowed. Hers was not the smile of a girl flatly complacent in an effort to be very agreeable. She believed; the love she had for the man at her side was consecrated first to truth. Her will was that of a blade of steel—yielding, serviceable; but still elastic or firm, as need be and as its highest purposes required. She smiled, but the smile mounting to her brightening eyes, left her fine forehead, a very temple of thought, all placid. The smile and the glance routed all doubts from the young man’s mind. She to him was a Venus, and more, a saint. She wore the invisible girdle of which the knight had spoken, and the youth felt its winning power. Another proof that the best advocate of a woman is a woman; and of her worth, the best argument an example.

The orator knight proceeded without pause:

“I know full well that some sneer and carp on woman’s weakness, having recourse to Eden for argument. To these I reply: The enemy assailed not the weaker, but the stronger first, and exhibited masterly generalship in seeking to overcome the citadel that would insure the greatest loss, the most complete victory. And note how long and arduous his siege of Eve; then remember how quickly Adam fell. Crush the woman’s heart, ruin her faith, degrade her body, and then, with this work completed, we are ready to ring down the curtain over the end of the tragedy of a wrecked world. When men hold women to their hearts, their manhood is enlarged and their queens become their angels, bearing a ‘grail’ that catches for both the choice things of heaven. But when a man turns his strength against a woman, she ceases to be his charming, alluring helpmate. He has brawn, and she, not having that, puts on that cunning which is the natural arm of the weaker. When the honey-suckle turns to poison-ivy, or the dove to a fox, then weep; but when woman lays aside the entrancings of her moral beauty to enter a desperate strife with armed cunning, let men go mad over their queens become witches. I tell you, hearers, when men become demons women will give themselves to sorcery. I speak not of spiritual possession, but of human deflowering. Shall our queens be uncrowned, disrobed, degraded? No, no, Satan alone could say ‘yea.’”

When the burst of applause that had interrupted him subsided, the Hospitaler continued:

“We knights revere the sign of the cross because the world’s Savior died thereon; it will be well for us to revere womankind because it was given to woman, not to man, to coöperate with God in bringing that Savior to the world. A woman bore him with crucial pains, as each of us was borne, before He bore the cross. And reverently I say it, companions, woman’s cross is ever set, and all the earth is her Calvary. I can not but see, as must you who think, that all this pain to her has in God’s great plan some vicarious element, some blessing for mankind. We Christians pray for the second coming of Jesus, the Jews wait and weep for the dawn of a day of salvation, the Mohammedans, like hosts of the Pagans, in every clime, are longing for some golden day; better than the present. This universal longing is a prophecy of good to come. I can not believe that the All-Father would suffer this universal and intuitive longing to end in disappointment and mockery. He is too good for that. By this longing I see standing out, less dimly, and yet dimly enough to be by many unseen, some sublime, prophetic hints. Read sacred Writ. Wherever therein you discern a prophetic character, emblem of Christ, forerunner of the golden age, you will find not far from him, as his partner and help, fittingly a woman!

“From the first it was so. Adam the first appeared, and a woman was his partner, helpmate and more. He fell. A way of recovery was provided for him, but it was the woman who was given to bring forth the One whose heel was to crush the head of the author of humanity’s great catastrophe. Then came the second Adam—Immanuel. At his advent the chief figure, next after God the chief instrument in His bringing in, by His side along the years in all helpful ministries, a woman, Mary, the beautiful, the perfect, the ideal of women.

“Again and again we have puzzled over the records, wondering why Matthew traced the genealogy of Jesus along the male line only, through David and Jacob to Abraham the father of the faithful, and that Luke traced that genealogy through Mary and her father, Heli. But there’s method most wise in the records. Matthew wrote for the Jews, Luke for the Gentiles. The hint is herein given that when the Gentiles are fully gathered in, woman will be recognized in the ultimate religion, that knows neither race nor sex. As in the royal line which gave man a Savior, as in a queenly line having for man, society and home—the emblem of heaven expressed on earth—blessing and saving powers.”

The knight closed with an appeal for the continuance of the revival of the chivalrous spirit toward woman, saying:

“It matters little what becomes of the dust of the pious dead; the past is secure, and Deity guards till the resurrection all tombs in His own unfrustrated way, but it matters much how we treat the living! That is a puerile piety which is ready to die to defend from foes that can not harm inanimate ashes that appeal for no favor, while suffering, willingly, living bodies encompassing bleeding hearts, to continue amid untold agonies, their whole existence one long appeal for succor! Christian knights, on with your new crusade, and may the golden age come grandly in, its fruits—love, joy, and peace in every clime, to every race, to every man, woman, and child!”

The speaker sat down; there was a moment of deep silence, followed by an outburst of approving acclamations.

Then ensued a hum of voices, the assembly breaking up into little groups, one and another attempting each to prove his loyalty, his piety or his good sense to the man next to him, by certifying his belief in the knight’s words.

Miriamne, half unconscious of her surroundings, exclaimed:

“Oh, will not some one tell me how to begin?”

“Can I aid my Miriamne?” asked her lover.

“I don’t know; perhaps. But that Grail Knight with the silver tongue sees, in his soul, what I would reach. When he speaks my feet take wings. I can not tell you what or how it all is. He speaks and I see, as Moses in the mount, the outline of the tabernacle of God that is to be with men.”

CHAPTER XXXIV.
MEMORIALS AT BOZRAH.