CHAPTER XXIV.

A HEROINE’S PILGRIMAGE.

“There is a vision, in the heart of each, Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness To wrong and pain and knowledge of the cure; And these embodied in a woman’s form, That best transmits them pure as first received.”—Robert Browning.

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word.”—MARY.

Miriamne, the day after her conversion, at evening, was sitting in the portal of the church at Bozrah, musing. “Oh, how I thank Father Adolphus for showing me the way to this peace!” The western sky, to the maiden’s rapt imagination, seemed very like the gate of Heaven, and in her meditations she exclaimed as if talking to those in glory, yet near to her: “Mother of my Saviour, I need a mother! Thou and I, two women, loved of the same Lord, shall we not evermore be friends?” Then the stars glittered through the fading sun light like night-lamps, set along the parapets of that far off city, and the maiden felt as if heaven’s doors were being shut. She was oppressed with a sense of being left alone, and thereupon cried out, “Oh, Jesus, Jesus, do not leave me here in the dark; Oh! thou mother, sainted and happy, may I not be where thou art until morning?” The cry or prayer of the girl, having in it much of the poet, little of the skilled theologian, was one likely to be censured by those adept in stately forms, and yet it was very natural. Miriamne was but an infant in experience and had yet to learn that after the resurrection came Pentecost; then the Ascension. Steps like these are in the believer’s experience; conversion is a rising from the dead to be followed by the assuring work of the Holy Spirit, then Heaven. But the soul quickened from the charnel-house of sin and inducted, not only into a new inner life but into a new fellowship, hungers for more and more. Hence, it is a common thing for the young convert to wish to die, and be away from life’s turmoils and defilements at once and with the glorified, immediately, forever. It is as if the disciple would pass at once from the sepulcher directly up the Mount of Ascension. In this spirit Mary Magdalene pressed forward to embrace to her human heart the newly risen Saviour that morning when he tenderly restrained her. There was something for her to be and do before the final rest on the Divine bosom, in unending rapture. “_Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended_,” as if He would say, “I myself, have other work yet, before the eternal gates are lifted up for my triumphal entrance as the King of Glory.” “_Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father._” The master words were, “Go;” “say.” The load Jesus put on His followers was the same in kind, though infinitely less, that He took on Himself. Some way it was love burdening with blessing, for He that in dying agony sent the Rose of His heart, Mary, to the home of John instead of at once to Paradise, knew surely that then for her that was best. “To go” and “tell” was best for Magdalene, as to stay and work for a time is best for all:

So Miriamne’s prayer, though so worded that it would have been censured by the learned churchmen, was heard in heaven, and He that said: “My peace I leave with you,” ministered, all unseen by human eye, to that lamb, bleating alone amid the dark giant castles of Bashan and the darker castles of fears that hover not far from each new-born of His Kingdom. She passed from repining, from morbidly wishing to die and from thoughts solely of her own weal, to the second stage of experience; that stage, where the young convert is influenced with a burning zeal to tell of the blessings found and thereby win others for the Saviour. Miriamne soon felt desire inexpressible to run and tell others of her joy. Then her mind recurred to her father, living somewhere far to the westward, just beneath where she had fancied the gates of heaven were a little while ago. “No, no; I cannot go yet! I must stay here and do something. Oh, I’d be ashamed to go to heaven and leave my father, my mother, my brothers, my people in their misery!” As she thus spoke she pulled her hand quickly down by her side. The motion like to one pulling away from some leading influence. A voice at hand spoke: “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”

Miriamne, with a slight startled exclamation, turned to see whence the voice and with joy beheld Father Adolphus.

“Oh, dear Father, I’m glad you came this way! I want to tell you above all others how happy you made me.”

Solemnly and tenderly the old man replied: “‘Not unto us, oh Lord; not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for thy truth’s sake.’”

“Yes, He has done it; but you helped, good teacher; and I am so happy! Oh, I do not know myself! I feel so changed. I’m growing wiser, happier and stronger every minute.”

“If so, then, He that called thee, daughter, had a purpose.”

“I know it; see it; feel it. I’m called to help my people; to bring together Sir Charleroy and Rizpah.”

“Say ‘my parents’; it’s more filial.”

“Yes, but it’s so strange. I call them in my mind now all the time by their names. It seems as if I belonged to another family; that of Jesus, Mary and the Angels.”

“A child of the Kingdom, indeed! When thy parents are converted, the family tie will be revived. Thou dost feel the love of heaven; the great eternal family bond, as Christ when he said: ‘My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it.’”

“But if I hope to bring my parents together I must go first to my father and persuade him. I know my mother will object to the journey. Can I disobey her and still please God?”

“Ask God. I have for thee, and already see thy way. I have already acted in this matter.”

“I can not forget the law in that I learn that ‘He that setteth lightly by his father or his mother is cursed.’ Among our noble ancients, the Maccabees, the disobedient child was even stoned to death.”

“But thy salvation puts thee under the Gospel, although, under the Law even parents had duties; they were forbidden to make their children walk through the idolatrous fires. What says Jesus to thee?”

“I do not know whether it be His spirit or not; yet all the time I hear a voice within me saying: ‘These twain shall be one.’”

“I see thy soul abhors this actual divorcement of thy parents. Oh, how some play hide and seek with their consciences around forms as these do; not comforting but hating each other; not bearing together their common burdens; wide seas between them, yet fancying they have violated no law of God, because they have not asked the law of man to do what it never can, truly, proclaim two, neither having committed the deadly sin, apart.”

“This separate living is their constant sin?”

“He that starts wrongly repeats the wrong anew each time that, by act or thought, he approves the wrong first done. Sin’s name is truly legion.”

“What an awful thing is sin!”

“True, daughter. It blinds its victims here, and its wages hereafter is death.”

“That’s why I fear to disobey my mother; what if it be sin to do so?”

“The command, my child, is ‘children obey your parents—_in the Lord_.”

“What does ‘in the Lord’ mean?”

“I’ll tell thee, my little catechumen; there comes a time to some youths, in pious life, when duty to God compels disobedience of parents; as it came to Jonathan, son of Saul. God is Father and mother to the righteous, and His law must be first. Mary left home and every thing, first and last, to follow Jesus. Her way was the Christian’s.”

“I thought once I was right in obeying my mother without question. Now I think I may be right in disobeying without question. The old and the new law are at war within me.”

“Amid these Bashan hills Paul, the Holy Saint, traveled, led of God from thinking that directly opposite to his former beliefs, the truth. Jesus met him then on the way to Damascus, in power and in glory; Paul had been for a long time a profound scholar, a Pharisee of thy people. On this journey, enlightened by the spirit, he asked and learned sincerely to ask, the question of questions in this life; ‘_Lord what wilt thou have me to do?_’ I beseech thee to ask it daughter, as thy hourly prayer.”

“Did God answer Paul?”

“Yea.”

“How?”

“The blessed apostle tells all! ‘When it pleased God who separated me from my mother’s womb to reveal His son in me, that I might preach among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, ... but I went into Arabia.’ Neither wife, friend, child, nor Ephesian Elders, clinging with tears, could hold him back from duty. Then he preached through this wild country.”

“But I’m not Paul, and only a woman.”

“‘Only a woman!’ She out of whom went seven devils, a woman, was the herald of the resurrection, and the church; God’s glory in the earth, is likened unto a woman. Oh, when a woman is clothed with the Sun, there is nothing more resplendent, and as for power, naught prevails against her. It seems to me if thou dost emulate her who said to God’s messenger: ‘_Be it unto me according to thy word_’ thou wilt go ere long to thy father; but thou must now return!”

“Return whither? This spot of all earth alone tolerates me!”

“No, that’s changed! Thou art the Child of a King. Go home; ay, rise to tell of the One that hath risen in thy heart.”

“Dare I? Must I?” Miriamne soon answered, by action, her own questions.

The young woman started homeward; at first with fearfulness. Then there came to her great calmness and courage, as she thought: “If I was wrong in going, I’m right in returning. My mother scared me from home into God’s arms. I can tell her that.” The new life had quickened within her the springs of affection. In all her life before she had not been so long apart from her mother. She said to herself, “I’ll just spring into her arms, when I meet her!” And she would have, if permitted.

The mother with a face like a stone, emotionless, saw her approach. When the latter stood by the threshold, the parent freezingly said: “Well; what dost thou want here?”

A dozen answers pressed for utterance. Some like those shaped by an angry or reckless girl; some such as might come to a politic woman, having recourse ever to cunning against the odds of power. The first thoughts were not of love, the last not of truth. In an instant Miriamne remembered her new personality. She was the missionary! She dared, being right, face any thing, even her mother’s wrath; but in her soul she dared not let bitterness rule. She knew as well that she dared not tell the truth so as to convey a false impression. She might have done so once; but not now. “Lord what wilt thou have me to do?” the golden prayer was on her lips and she had instant grace to say quietly: “I was doing no wrong.”

“Was where?”

How brave the girl had become. Her reply was calm and courageous. “I was, for a time praying to God; but safe, for God was with me in the Spirit and good Father Adolphus in the flesh.”

“The Old Clock Man!”

“Yea.”

“The wizard! I so suspected. Here is more of this bad work;” and Rizpah angrily thrust before Miriamne a scroll. “That fawning, heretic-priest came here and left this with mock piety saying: ‘I, being the mother, might read it!’ I had no humor to converse with him; but of thee I demand the full meaning. Now, no avoidance, girl; dost thou hear!” Miriamne was not only not abashed, but in her new-found courage took the letter, and without a quaver of the voice, read:

“TO THE GRAND MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, LONDON.

“_Faithful Knight and Son of the Church_:

“GREETING—I herewith commend to thee and thy most pious and chivalrous offices, my beloved catechumen, Miriamne de Griffin, of Bozrah. She is the truly noble daughter of an English nobleman, now living somewhere in London. He is, I fear, prodigal toward God, and an exile from his family; perhaps in the distress of bodily ailment, most grievous. Prompted by holy desires, this young woman, whom I commend, may come to thy city in the hope of finding her father, for the compassing of his restoration to health, his family and righteousness. Had I the power, I would command the thousand liveried angels, said ever to attend the Holy Virgin, to encompass ever this sweet and pious daughter of Knight de Griffin; but being impotent to direct the angel guard, I serenely commit my daughter in the spirit, to the watch, care and chivalrous regard of thyself and thy companion knights.

“All saints salute thee. My benediction be on thee. _In pace._

“ADOLPHUS VON GOMBARD.”

“And _thou_ dost think thou couldst go alone, half round the world, find that renegade wanderer, bring him here, make him good, tolerable, and re-unite our family? THOU?” Rizpah stopped, her voice almost at the pitch of a scream; her utterance ending in a groan that died with a hiss.

Miriamne responded calmly: “I can not tell what I may achieve, that is with God; but I know what I must attempt. The path of duty is clear, and I enter it unwaveringly.”

“And I, as unwaveringly, forbid.”

“I expected this command, and in all love for thee, my mother, shall disobey it.”

Rizpah turned pale, her eyes became leaden. She was for an instant like one stunned by a sudden, heavy blow, and disarmed. The little submissive child that she deemed her daughter to be, was suddenly transformed before her; changed in fact to a firm, strong, brave woman. But the elder quickly recovered, and while clearly perceiving that violence would be futile, had recourse to the last arm of the half-defeated, to ridicule.

“Disobedience, oh, I see, this is a part of this superior religion of thine and that old ‘Old Clock Man;’ this Gombard, ha! ha! It was always so. New religions please by freeing from law! What an old idiot that Solomon of the ancients! He taught ‘forsake not the law of thy mother.’”

“Mother, I have two parents and obligations to both. I find our home shattered, and I for most of my life half orphan. I have thereby great and lasting loss. My brothers and you suffer as well. I am led of God, in a desire to seek a remedy for our troubles. I would gladly obey your edicts, but first I must obey my Maker and King.”

“Girl, false teachings lure thee to a curse.”

“You know mother, you yourself cursed the memory of Herod not long ago, when we wandered amid the ruins at Kauawat and saw the remnants of his image, as angry Christians left it, shattered years ago. That day you said a curse on him that broke up families or made innocents mourn, whether he lived anciently or now.”

“Well?”

“I say a curse, bitter, on every act that breaks up or beclouds a home! But not I, it is God that curses!”

Rizpah was speechless and withdrew from the room, motioning silence with a stately, angry wave of her hand. She was defeated in the debate, but not subdued. The next day Rizpah renewed the subject, but this time adopting the tactics of kindness.

“My darling, since yesterday I’ve been thinking thy good intentions worthy of approval for their spirit of love. I’d approve thy purpose did I not forsee that the great sacrifice on thy part would be fruitless. Thy father and I could never live together! If thou foundst him thou couldst not love him as he is, and, as for reforming him, that were impossible!”

“I must try.”

“’Tis useless; a woman as wise, as patient, and as earnestly seeking that result as thou, gave years of devotion, deep as her life, to that purpose. They failed utterly.”

“Was that woman my mother?”

“Yes, listen. In the glorious romances of youth I met Sir Charleroy. I pitied him coming to our house a defeated Crusader, a refugee. Pity gave way to admiration. There were few about me whom I could love; I had no mother. In some way I gave him her part of my heart first, then the rest of it. I admired him for his soldier-like bravery. He was older and vastly wiser than I. All my ambitions seemed to be satisfied in climbing up with his thoughts. He was able to teach me a thousand things I never before heard of. Heart and mind were intoxicated. I unconditionally surrendered all to him, with an almost worshipful devotion. I could not have made a more complete committal if my God had come in human form and sought me for His everlasting companionship. I fled with him from my father’s home. In the wild Lejah and this Bozrah we lived for a time together, until he changed from lover to hater! Here my unnatural love was murdered by inches. I can now reason better than then, and yet the past seems like a nightmare. Thy father knew a great deal, intended to be kind but did not comprehend the dangerous responsibility of taking to his care such a passionate, imaginative, impressible creature as I was. He did not realize that there is a period in a woman’s life when she may be literally made into another being. In every generation women are walking by thousands through a sort of passion week. I walked in mine, ready to be molded almost into any form; but he tried to have me profess to be a Christian, live like a devotee of Astarte and be as Anata of the Assyrians to her husband, but the echo of himself. I might have done all this, but he tried to hasten me by force, and then all fell to ruins like those amid which we lived. That glorious structure of love which romance built, became the saddest ruin here in those days.

“I was then a young woman, just entering the perilous, exhaustive periods of maternity. I was weak and nervous, and sometimes may have tried his patience, but I thought then that he ought to have borne with me. I am now certain he ought. After he left, I was for a time glad. I had renewed freedom from arguments, rasping and crossing of purposes. Then I felt the martyr’s joy. I felt I was left, a girl-wife, with babe in arms, to battle alone, for God’s sake, for thy sake. It seemed often that the arching heavens above were smiling upon baby and me; that sustained me. But, daughter, my moral training had been as thorough as has been thine. My idea of the solemnity and life-bindingness of the marriage tie could be no higher than it was. I believed it divine to be forgiving, and finally was impelled to turn from our broken home, to find, if possible, my recreant spouse. Dominated by convictions of duty, and often by a revived, wild, soul-possessing love for Sir Charleroy, I went to far off, strange London, I hunted out Sir Charleroy and was ready to be all things, any thing for his sake. He received me tenderly, only to soon change to cruelty. Your brothers were born there, adding to my load new burdens; but I was without help. He never seemed to study my comfort, pleasure nor needs. In a nation of strangers, with strange ways, I was alone. He knew scores; I knew only that one man. Repulsed by him I drank again and again the depths of misery, having no heart in all the great city to counsel nor love me. Then thy father took delight in vice. I was crucified for months; my only comfort communing in memory with the Sir Charleroy that had been, the tender, loving, brave Palestine knight. In those dark days, I found there was a place where persecuted Israelites secretly met; a sort of cleft-rock synagogue. Thither I went for consolation. I was wedded anew to my religion, because it was mother, father, husband and all to me; when there was none but God left to me. I came to long, daily, for the time to go to that meeting place of a few Hebrews just to pray God for two things. One, the most pitiful of prayers for a mother, that He would care for my children and keep them from being like their father; the other that I might be permitted soon to die! Thy father grew constantly more brutal, taciturn and fitful! At last I had an explanation. I found by unmistakable signs that he was going mad. I saw further that that madness took the shape of a murderous antipathy for me and the children. Under the advice of the rabbi, leader of our people at London, I determined, as the only alternative, to return to our Bozrah home and leave him to the care of his companion knights. In blank, leaden grief I left London. I came to these scenes of desolation with a heart as broken as any that ever survived its pains. I could have died. I returned, my fate fixed, the cup of my retribution for having disobeyed my parent full. Once a queenly, blithesome girl, petted and loved by hundreds, changed to a lone, sad widow and prematurely old. A wife without a husband, a Jew without the recognition of my people. How utterly isolated! Thou know’st the rest, daughter.”

The two women were silent. Miriamne was moved by the revelation to a wondrous pity; but her royal sentence: “_Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?_” seemed to be written on the air just before her uplifted eyes.

Then questioned the elder, “And thou my daughter, a woman, wilt not also leave me? It’s a woman’s heart that pitifully questions.”

“I’ll never forsake my mother!”

“And never leave?”

“Except, only as God commissions!”

“Oh, say that thou wilt never leave me in life! I said this in cruel pains for thee, Miriamne. Miriamne, daughter, here by the couch in which thou wert born, I plead.” So saying the mother dropped on one knee, flung one arm over the bed by her side, and stretched out the other toward her daughter.

The maiden was profoundly moved, her loving heart seemed to be swelling within her, all her emotional nature ready to exclaim, “I’ll tarry,” but again her royal sentence: “_Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?_” controlled.

“Loved mother, I am not my own. God has bought me, and in His dear love I go. The story of sorrow I’ve just heard confirms me in my purpose. I’m called, I know, to work out a new and brighter day for mother and father!”

Rizpah was both pained and chagrined, and burying her face in her _pepulum_ moaned, “God, pity me!”

“He does, I know, and sends a daughter to bear thee proof, my mother.”

The mother, as if not hearing the latter words, continued, growing vehement: “The necromancy of that Nazarine priest has hastened the workings of heredity’s curse! Girl, thy father’s distemper is taking root in thy brain; thou too, art going mad! This scheme of peril, foredoomed to failure, is worthy of a bedlamite only. Oh, Jehovah, my shepherd, thou lead’st me now by bitter waters!”

“Mother, you called me at my birth, ‘Marah,’ ‘bitterness.’ You know how the people murmured by the bitter springs of Marah, in the wilderness, but God showed Moses a tree that sweetened the water. I’ve seen that tree and felt its power. It grows on the mount called Calvary, and is immortal.”

“Be considerate now, daughter, since I meet thee kindly. To one not believing thy Nazarene doctrine, it is useless to appeal with Christian figures.”

“Well, mother, you remember Jeptha? He had a daughter, and she was all-influential with him.”

“He was the cause of her death, as thy father will be of thine.”

“But Jeptha’s daughter became a heroine.”

“When dost thou depart?” questioned Rizpah.

“Next Lord’s day I say my last prayers in Bozrah.”

“Farewell. As well now as later. I can not bear a long parting, and after to-day we shall speak no more of this.” Miriamne was amazed by the sudden change.

“Do I go in peace?”

“Ah, daughter, what a question? A mother’s undiminished love will follow thee even unto death, winging a thousand daily prayers to Israel’s Shepherd in thy behalf. Yet, I shall condemn thy going, rebuke thy disobedience, perhaps frown upon thee, and even say, ‘I disown thee!’ But, though I do all this, there will be tears in my voice and kisses in my heart, for my first-born. All my authority as a mother cries against thy going, and all my mother-heart embraces. I’ll not kiss thee as thou departest, but waft hundreds after thee when thou art gone. I’m not Rizpah, devotee of Rizpah now. I’m only a woman, a parent, a voice uttering two decrees; one of the head and one of the heart!”

Miriamne was inexpressibly rejoiced by the words she had heard, as they betokened the breaking down of the strong opposition to her purpose; but she could not trust herself further than to say, as she affectionately embraced her mother, “And I can only cry as did that noble Bethlehem mother to God’s messenger: ‘_Be it unto me according to thy word._’ He leads, I follow.”