“Oh say to mothers, what a holy charge
Is theirs! With what a queenly power, their love
Can rule the fountain of a new-born mind.
Warn them to wake at early dawn and sow
Good seed before the world has sown its tares;
Nor in their toil decline, that angel bands
May put their sickles in and reap for God
And gather in his garner.”
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[246] 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[247] 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[248] 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[249] 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[250] 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[251] 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[252] 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[253] 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[254] 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,” sa............