CHAPTER X.

AFTER EVE, ESTHER OR MARY?

“Still slowly passed the melancholy day, And still the stranger wist not where to stray: The world was sad—the Garden was a wild; And man, the hermit, sighed—till woman smiled.”—MILTON.

The Israelites, along Jabbock, were all aglow with preparation for celebrating one of their feasts. Sir Charleroy and his comrade journeying along, in the early morning, were apprised of the advent of the festivities by the passing near them of a company of maidens, marching and chanting. The pilgrims drew apart and sequestered themselves behind a clump of nubt trees that they might observe, themselves unobserved, the graceful procession of singers.

“Well, my poet, didst thou conjure up these fairies, or have we come on the musk-born houri?” Sir Charleroy spoke in an absent-minded manner, perhaps, with an affectation of a lack of very much interest. In fact, long privation of the presence of women had somehow rusted from his bearing, in their vicinage, most of the confident courtier. In a word, he was now bashful in their presence. He spoke with a small witticism to subdue, his own embarrassment. His words were unheard, for the Jew was all engaged in contemplating the passing women.

In truth, the latter made a striking picture; garbed as they were, in holiday attire; all young, oriental in beauty, and fresh in face, form and action. They were rural maidens and that says all. It had been a long time since either Ichabod or Sir Charleroy had met such types of womanhood; all free from affectation; all natural and graceful in motion; a band of women, as sisters, bent to one purpose and that a lofty one, the proper observance of a joyous, pious, religious ceremonial.

Presently Ichabod drew a long breath and rapturously exclaimed: “Praise be to the Patriarchs, my people!”

“I’d rather say, Ichabod, praise the Patriarch’s daughters, if these be human!”

“Ha, ha! flesh, indeed! Our Hebrew maidens celebrating the Feast of Esther!”

“Are they praying God for Adams, so that each Esther and Vashti may have one all to herself? If so, we are part answers to their prayers.”

“Hush such jest! These be holy maidens, now honoring our Esther. Thou knowest about her?”

“Certainly; she was my heroine before Our Lady dethroned in my heart all others. I was wont to wish I’d been about in Haman’s time. I’d have aroused that old dotard, Ahasuerus, right quickly. By the sackcloth of Mordecai, if I’d been the king, the hanging would have put the Haman family into mourning long before it did.”

“Oh, how like angels! It’s years since I saw a woman other than as deflowered by harem life. Heavens, what a spoiler man is at his worst!”

“Dost forget Nourahmal? But no matter; I admire, and wonder that some roving band of Arabs, with less piety, or more force than we, does not swoop down upon these innocents for seraglio prizes. Perhaps these have the liveried angels about, that are said ever to guard saintly purity.”

“Doubtless; and besides them, with all the practical providence which belongs to the Jew, thou mayst be sure that the groves, not far away, are full of fathers, brothers, lovers.”

“I wish I were a brother to some of them.”

“Then thou’dst be a Jew.”

“I’d forget that in being a lover to the others.”

“Thou wouldst not change thy faith for a woman?”

“Now, I’d swear I would not. If like most men, and in love, I’d swear I would; and then, having gotten my new priestess, in a little while, backslide and drag her with me, or make her heart weep. My comfort in the last estate being my consistency, if not my constancy. What a mad rout it is when religion and love, born twins, cross purposes?”

“That’s a very true, yet bitter speech. I’ll tell the Hebrew maidens to beware.”

“Better tell me to beware, now. It’s the beginning that makes the trouble. No beginning, then no after folly.”

The procession glided past and the pilgrims followed at a distance.

“We are within an arm of dear old Jabbock,” remarked Ichabod, as they came to a river-bank, later.

“Ah, ha! my chartless pilot, does the current whisper its name to thee, in Hebrew? I’d not wonder if it did, since every thing is clannish in this country.—I hope there is no more swimming for us to do.”

“Its tumbling waters are full of voices to me, blending with echoes of things of the past; but one who spoke a thousand times more tenderly than ever spoke murmuring waters, told me its name, knight.”

“Nourahmal? No! rather some one of those pious beauties we passed not long ago. Oh, roguish Ichabod, I remember thou wert away a long time in the morning after our breakfast of peas and grapes. But, dear Ichabod,” continued Sir Charleroy, feigning rebuke, “didst thou so soon forget thy little convert of Jericho? I wonder if thou lifted up thy voice and wept when thou kissed the maid that told thee the river’s name? Come, confess, and I’ll call thee Isaac.”

“Raillery of prime quality, knight; but raillery and ridicule, though keenly pointed, are generally bad arrows for long range.”

“Well, no matter. I’m glad thou knowest the place, if thou dost know it. Who told thee the name of this water?”

“One with a voice to me sweeter, kinder than that of any betrothed lover’s ever can be.”

“Very, very eloquent thou art. Indeed, if we were in Italy, I’d guess ’twas a syren had communed with thee; in France, a Crusader troubadour; in Rhineland, the water sprite, Lurline; but, being in this wondrous country of revelations, apparitions, prophets, angels and the like, I can only as a catechumen, ask thy dulcet informer’s name?”

“How oddly thou dost talk when thou talkest as a double man; half sneering infidel; half Christian preacher.”

“A truce, Ichabod. That may be a home-thrust well aimed, but it’s enough that one of us be bitter. It’s sometimes natural to me, but not to thee.”

“A bee-sting will redden the high priest’s brow.”

“Well, I’ll not sting thee. Who gave the name of the river?”

“Master, one to me alone of all the world an angel, my mother. I was born near here, and the memories of a youth made happy by one all patient, all loving, rises above and survives all changes.”

“My noble friend, forgive my repartee. I’m glad, truly, that we are so lucky as to have this knowledge.”

“Lucky? Then all is not fate; there is some chance, if no Providence?”

“Pardon more; the bee-sting is still on thy brow. Ichabod, I can not help my feelings, which sometimes make me think that only God can tread the hidden, narrow line between stern fate and happy accident. They say the Sybil wrote her prophetic decrees upon leaves and flung them recklessly to the inconstant winds. Just so we’re in decreed courses, swirled by chance gusts.”

“Yet we two are getting on well together.”

“So do chance and fate; the pity is to the waif that falls between them.”

“I wonder how here, in Holy Land, thou canst think of any control but Providence.”

“Wonder? So do I. I’m a bundle of wonderings.”

“Listen to Jabbock.”

“I do, more attentively than Jabbock to me. What of it?”

“Grander rivers are forgotten; why is it so remembered?”

“We’re forgotten, meaner men remembered.”

“This river sings through the centuries of history the song of a fugitive of pale heart, who in sheer desperation, long, long ago, seized a fleeting hope and became a prince, having power to prevail with God.”

“Ah, Jacob, who worked fourteen years to win a woman. It was, I’m sure, the woman that nerved him to attempt greatness. Such a woman! Had she been like our moderns she would have jilted him, or eloped with him, before the end of one of the fourteen years.”

“I’ll not tilt with thy sarcasms. It were much better to remember that he, a pigmy, the night in his soul, as that about him, black as Erebus, grappled with the mighty, unknown, unseen apparition to find he was holding Deity. The mysteries of crossing fates and chances are as open nut-bur compared to that of all weakness prevailing with Omnipotence, my good master, I think.”

“But ever after that joust, Jacob was a cripple!”

“Oh, but remember, as he halted on his thigh the sun rose over Penuel, ‘the place of seeing God,’ by interpretation. He was stronger for his laming!”

“A very ‘Timor-lame,’ this prince of great chances and mean ways.”

“Time and trial repaired Jacob’s spotted soul.”

“There was much room for the mending, I do vow.”

“His weightings bespeak some charity. Think; a weak mother, one designing wife, and plenty of wealth!”

“Well, ’tis true, these were enough to have undone St. Anthony, if the devil had only thought to have tried them all at once upon him!”

“Sir Charleroy swings back to his old bitterness toward women; did he never love one?”

“No, not as a lover. I was never tried except by designing coquetries that nauseated finally.”

“Perhaps, like most solitary men, thou so revered thyself by habit that there was no room for other person in thy heart.”

“I never met one I deemed perfect and available.”

“Better to have loved some one far from perfect than none. If thy heart-fount had been once touched it would have set thy imaginations to weaving halos about the one touching. Thou wouldst have enthroned her by a love that would have transformed both. She would have become in time what she was in love’s young dream; while thou wouldst have grown by the experience to be twice the man thou hadst been—or art.”

“The sun in thy head is settling down into thy heart, Jew.”

“Is that so, Charleroy?”

“Yes, but not to harm; heart sunsets ripen heart fruits; that’s the reason the autumn suns run low; the low suns ripen. But after all, I’m not so very miserable in heart. I’ve loved some women; mother and my Mary——”

“Filial love, religious love! somewhat akin and blessing him that feels their mellow, exalting influences; but, oh, Sir Charleroy, they do not fill completely the heart’s temple. There are places there for the expression of ruddy, glorious lover’s love. The three make up an all-comprehending trinity, and fill the man as Deity the universe. I see religious love in adoration of God’s Fatherhood, mother love in the tender leading of the Spirit, lover’s love in the priceless self-surrender of our Saviour. That made the angels sing, and in the being of each of our race there is room, aye need, of the melody which only the experiencing of this passion in full can produce. In love-mating is a wondrous thrill which can be but faintly voiced even by those who have experienced it.

“There are other passions which ebb with time, or, being well fed, wax gross; not so with this one. Inspired by the potencies of life, which lie at the very core of being, it wells up in rills, rivers and torrents of pleasurable sensations. Out from the heart it goes to the remotest members, only to double on its courses and dash again through the beating heart, heating its flame by its doubling and hasting, making the beatings wilder by its hastings, and then hasting more because of the wilder beatings. Of all emotions love is the most tireless. It increases by giving, grows stronger by action and proclaims the secret of its heavenly birth, its immortality, by the way in which it deepens and ripens with every movement of its life. Aye, more, it proclaims itself the power of the resurrection by the way it transforms the lives it possesses. A man may be a lout, ever so crude in fiber, but this musical flame passing through his being, burns up his dross, making him all brave, courteous, tender, poetic, religious! Yea, religious! If it do not utterly redeem a sinner possessed by it, it will take him nearer to salvation than any other power known on earth, except the Spirit of Grace. It is as the opening of the eyes of the blind man, for it opens the doors of a new sense to the realizing of a world as new as delightful. As the thrummings on the harp-strings someway leave a lasting sonorousness and tenderness in the supporting woods about the lyre, so leaves this passion, through the beatings of every wave of it, wealth. Its devotee by it is inducted into exhaustless new realms and possessions, unalterably secured to him, and at the same time beyond all computation. He ever gathers treasures, as a prince from incoming fleets, and is made affluent beyond all counting. He surpasses all in wealth-getting, and yet is infinitely apart from the littleness of avarice. It is to him the advent of charity’s full-orbed day. It may be fancy in him, but it’s to him very real; the world about, as if having learned his secret, seems to be dressing for the wedding feast, while all things appear to be coming very confidentially to him to whisper the divine mandate, ‘marry and multiply.’ He is trusted, yet trusts; leads, yet follows. He is proud to display, a little, his conquest, but does so with a sort of alert charming selfishness, which gives notice to the world that he alone is to wear the chosen one upon his heart. He realizes the paradox of giving all and receiving all; the mystery of two lives merged into one by an utter surrender, each to each, which leaves both infinitely richer than the sum of all their ownings could make either if possessed by the one apart from the other. Oh, how almost imperiously each demands that the other shall surrender all and then how great the joy each feels in leading the chosen mate to surprises at the munificence and completeness of the giving up of all by the one who just now demanded all. I do not know the woman’s heart, but can readily believe it far surpasses the man’s in its consecration, enjoyment and aspiring. I know the man’s, but my words are ragged in description. I know that this grand passion makes him wondrously weak and wondrously strong. Sometimes these inner feelings come nigh overwhelming him; sometimes they fall upon his life like the musical ebb-waves on resonant shores. I can not word it all, nor is it strange, since I am speaking of a life of heavenly flights, and best expressed by voiceless signs, embraces. In love’s hour the man realizes, as never before, his lordliness and his pride and ambition are fed by a growing conviction that all the world is small beside himself and his; proud as a conqueror of untold wealth, he yields to the tender ties that unrelentingly bind him and crucifies his native roughness that he may be more like, more worthy her he rules and obeys. He is made finer; she stronger. Has she virtues, he appropriates them; at the same time, by the homage implied by his appropriation, makes them to shine more brightly on the brow and heart of his queen. He touches the fires on the altar she has erected within herself to love alone, and the altar-fires blaze until her whole being is illuminated as a temple on fête days. She puts on his best parts, and then he revels in delight as he beholds his virtues refined and so beautifully framed. There are times when, like a mighty anthem, his passion passes over and through him. Then is he nigh to madness, being in the mood to slay himself, or another doing aught to check the rapture of the mighty swellings of the music that pours over every nerve from head to heart, to limb. Then it is he embraces and kisses and embraces again; as an inspired artist of music, exhausting himself to prolong this joy, almost materialized. Indeed, I saw one who said ‘this is tangible music. I feel it; taste it; see it!’ It seems to thicken the air until I rise unwinged, and yet in a flight that seems to me as free and brilliant as that of the golden oriole’s. If the enchanted enchanter be pure and true, she leads her captive king, made tender and yet more manly by his captivity, surely upward from tumultuous passion’s sway to the ambrosial table-lands of higher affection where both may reign tenderly, bravely, hopefully, forever. I tell thee, knight, the finest spectacle on earth is a man in his prime, creation’s lord at his best, sincerely, completely in love with a queenly woman. Next after getting God into a man’s heart, the greatest blessing is the getting of a woman of genuine parts therein.”

“Oh, child of the sunny palm land, thou hast imbibed wondrous eloquence. But thou sayest truly. Now, for the women that are so to queen us men. No woman that I ever knew of could so intoxicate, transform and translate me.”

“One like Eve, the gift of God?”

“The first woman, like the first man, was pure without virtue, until tried; then she fell. I think of her chiefly as being a splendid animal, yet, as Adam was not left for man’s example, neither was she. I still think Eve passed by in history to be only what she was full proof that love which rises no higher than to give all to and for that which was like the fruit of the tempting tree, good for food and pleasant to the eyes, is not like the love that at last hung on the tree of Calvary. Oh, child of Abraham, I hear the ‘_voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day_,’ saying to a world of flitting, false ideals, and those yearning for pilots and patterns, ‘_Where art thou?_’ I don’t know, for one, exactly where I am, but I’m going forward and upward someway.”

“Sir Charleroy thou dost dazzle me by thy correspondences and insights, if I do thee by my pictures. We are quits.”

“But we’ll not quit. This pilgrim idleness has value. I never knew what I believed until, thus flung out of life’s hurly burly, I had little company but my thoughts. There was method of reason in God’s taking His prophets to lone places, to fit them for understanding the rapturing visions with which He filled them.”

“’Tis so, true; but what thinks the knight of Esther, the beautiful Queen? She’s the idol and ideal in Israel in all times and places.”

“Wondrous woman! A girl, petted, ill-trained, from poverty suddenly exalted, surrounded by the skilled intriguants of court, a jealous, exacting, conceited, harem-demoralized old king for a spouse, she was then burdened with the salvation of a nation. I’ve so pitied her that I’ve forgotten to admire how well she did in her trying lot.”

“Can the world ever have a finer figure or presentment of all that is womanly? I do not challenge thy Mary, but may I not put the two side by side?”

“Israel has two great women in their way. The one, Esther, exemplifying all sweetness and the mild strength of a suddenly developed woman, doing grandly in one emergency when great peril and great love aroused her from only being an entrancing, petted beauty, to be the heroine of an hour. But she was not tried by the searching test of a lifetime. She never meets the needs of mothers seeking an ideal. Rizpah, your other grand woman, was the mother, even the mother of sorrows, of the Old Testament. It takes these two to make an ideal, and yet the pattern is incomplete. God walks yet in the garden where men live, with only these two before them, and ever and anon they hear the unanswerable, ‘_Where art thou?_’”

“Why, my mentor, master, thou hast touched our Scriptures with the rod that budded; the whole opens to me as if for the first time. Methinks, if I were permitted to lay hands now upon one of our sacred volumes, I’d be fairly overcome by the light that would break out on me from within it.”

“‘The entrance of the word giveth light,’ Ichabod.”

“I’m moved, master, along lines I can not turn from, to the one woman of all, Mary. She is thy ideal queen of hearts?”

“I’m a pilgrim and follow her, seeing none better.”

“Then thou wouldst be willing to wed such as Mary?”

“Hold! This is sacrilegious! I’ll not think of Mary in any such comparison. Leave my patron saint upon her high pedestal. I save her for my soul’s health, as every man should save some noble woman, for an inner enshrining, to be all that woman may be at her best, his beloved, his inspirer, and yet touching no spring of his life save such as responds to things of moral grandeur.”

“Ah, master, I’ve not yet been enamored fully of this woman. I feel a stranger to her, but I feel the meaning of the finer things thou hast just spoken. I have the need of which thou dost speak, and my life, like a babe, often now goes out crying, ‘Mother, mother.’ As we lay, yesterday night, beneath the quiet firmament, I gazed up and asked a sign of God in prayer. It was a baby cry I know, but I saw one star that staid and staid above me. It seemed to be warmed with reddish tintings, and I thought that its glitterings were proof that it was taking part in some anthem of the morning stars. Then I dreamed that my mother was in the star all luminous, holy, happy, looking down in constant guardianship of her outcast boy! Oh, can a child ever be outcast utterly to mother? Can it be that she, who so loved me and so loved God, can hate me now, loving her and loving God as I do? God knows my heart! Will he not tell her all? Her constant mandate to me was, ‘keep a loyal heart, an undefiled conscience.’ I’ve tried to do both, but then her soul loathed apostacy. Does she loathe me for leaving Israel’s fold? My heart all torn, cries to-day, ‘Mother, mother!’ I’m sure she can not hate me. To-morrow I hope I shall pray at her grave.”

Then the vehement Israelite fell on the ground in an ecstasy, utterly unconscious of his companion, and, kissing the earth as if already he was by that parent’s resting place, wildly called, “Mother! my mamma! oh, I’m so lonely, so unhappy! Let me come! God, God, let me go to mother! Mother, I did it as thou saidst. I’m no leper. I’m not a heretic! I love thee. I love God. I’ve kept pure. I’ve trusted God’s care in all my trouble. Mamma, my mamma, let Ichabod embrace thee!” Exhausted and quivering he there lay. The knight was silent. It was holy ground, and the whole thicket about seemed to be glowing with the fire that burns without consuming.

The travelers were encamped again under the sky, and it was now night. A shooting star sped through the constellation of Orion and fell down toward the Dead Sea.

“An omen, Jew.”

“Explain, brother knight.”

“Life; bright, short, ending in gloom.”

“Look at the fixed stars.”

“They preach fate.”

“Perhaps, but they have the majority. Few fall; I think, too, Someone holds them.”

“Thy hopefulness colors thy faith.”

“Thy murmurings run toward final madness, knight; the Rabbis, good men, so taught me.”

“If one star falls may not all? If Providence hold them, why does one escape?”

“Thou hast heard that the giant Orion having lost his eyes, afterward regained his sight by turning his sockets toward the rising sun; that meteor we saw shot through the constellation Orion. Look up.”

“A happy simile and pungent thrust, Jew.”

“He that sent the lightnings to show us our way out of dread Jericho, most likely now commissioned some angel to swing a meteor across the sky as a torch or beacon for our guidance. The trail of flame teaches me that God is writing His royal signature on some great message.”

“This world is too vast and too thronged with insignificants, such as we, for such especial carings on God’s part. There are too many kings, too many shepherds, too many follies for Him to constantly watch any one or two.”

“Backward, forward; now good, now bad. What a charging, changing knight! Pray God to get thee right and then fix thee.”

Their converse was interrupted by a prolonged trumpet blast, echoing from hill to hill. Sir Charleroy sprang to his feet and clasping his sword hilt, cried eagerly, “We’re ambuscaded!”

“No, by the glory of God, ’twas the temple call! How grand it sounds away in this wilderness!”

“No, no, Jew, I’ve heard that call; this one had six responses.”

“’Twas echo’s magic! Didst thou not notice how the sound spread as it traveled in a sort of sheet of melody? Then it rose and fell from low hill to high. One blast; seven responses. Nature proclaiming against fate and chance; the covenant number.”

“I’m not so confident that it’s a miracle; what if it were some Mamelukes or Druses, planning one of their pious immolations of heretics with us for the victims?”

“Nay, brother, It’s ‘_Purim_’; that feast is now due, and always begins at early starlight. I know it. Come, I’ll put it to the proof.”

“Hold; poets are more rash than knights in a charge, but not so skillful in retreat! Whither wouldst thou?”

“I’ll spy out the trumpeters and report.”

“Not alone. I’ll go, too. This camp will care for itself if they beyond be friends; if enemies, why then, without consulting us, they will care for all we have. But this,” said the knight, toying with his sword, “was blessed by a priest to preach to infidels.”