“Heavens! Rizpah, thou dost twist my meanings! Why distort, instead of pardoning my blunders, making both of us miserable!”
“Oh, then, thou hast grace enough not to liken me to thy besetting, evil spirit, at least in words?”
“No, no, ’tis refined cruelty to put me on the defense as to that. Believe it or not, Rizpah of Gerash and Rizpah of Bozrah are the same. My heart to its core says so!”
This second quarrel, that should not have been begun, had the merit of ending, as it should, in reconciliation, tears, embraces and a great many excellent pledges. Yet Sir Charleroy did not greatly profit by the experience. He failed to perceive that these first breaks in the rhythmic flow of conjugal love are great shocks to a deeply affectionate woman. He knew that men easily recover from rebuffs, and so did not stop to consider that young wife-hood was the highest expression on earth of utter clinging to one sole support. He knew his own feelings and took them for the standard. He set himself up as the pattern, quite unconsciously, perhaps; and after the conflict in which he came off conceded victor, he was condescending in his manner. This was unfortunate. Rizpah did not need to be told that her husband was wiser and stronger willed and more self-possessed and more able to endure life’s trial than herself. All this she believed, absolutely, when she surrendered her heart to the man at the first. Woman-like, these were the very circumstances that caused her to love him as she did. A woman never loves completely until her love is supplemented by adoration. She must believe the man, who would make full conquest, is one to whom she can look up; one some way her superior. But while a loving woman will give a devotion almost religious, she will be pained amid her delights of committal by a haunting fear that he whom she adores may rise away from her. In the very plenitude of her fullest love-worship she will deny the reverence, sometimes, in a seeming inconsistency, rebuff and even ridicule her idol. It is with her a sort of hysteria, a confession of secret terror, lest she and he grow apart in mind, and so come to part in body. Hence it is a giant cruelty on the part of a husband, sometimes, to enforce, or thrust forward, his size or his lordship. They may be facts, but God has set over against them as their equal that love which clings, stimulates and supplements, without which the finest man is far less than the half of the united twain. Sir Charleroy blundered along in his error; Rizpah tried to be happy and failed. She did not know how to make the best of her surroundings, and Sir Charleroy did not know, because he did not seek religiously to find out how to help her make the best of them. They had some periods of pleasure, but they continually grew briefer and were more frequently interrupted as time went on. She was ill, he suffered himself to think her at times ill-tempered. As a lover, he admired her outbreaks as very brilliant, and flattered her by remarking that she had the metal of an Arabian steed; as a husband, he thought her very disagreeable when pettish or angry. Indeed, though he never said so to her, he did say to himself that at times she was very like a virago. The only steed that came to his mind then was the ass, to which he likened himself when he considered himself the perfection of submissive patience.
A new event radically changed the picture and situation in this troubled home.
The prayer of prayers was heard in Bozrah; the cry of a baby; a bundle of needs and helplessness, with no language but a cry. Processions of silent centuries had passed through those halls since they echoed the hoarse voices of the brawny beings who built them. One could not hear the infant cry without remembering the contrasts. A baby; a puny one at that, and of the gentler sex, besides being of a race pigmy compared to the stalwarts who builded those abodes. Sir Charleroy and his consort had set up their household gods, and for a goodly period had occupied as theirs a Rephaim home.
The little stranger came, though they did not discern it, with power to bless them both. A poetic visitor, happening on this baby’s hammock there and then, might have gone in raptures, to some truths, after this fashion: “It will be the golden tie, angel of peace and hope, to the home!” The philosopher, seeing the little bundle of helplessness, might have said: “Here is a giant, the home is immortal through its offspring; the babe requiring so much, richly repays its loving care-takers by inducting them into the soul expansions of unselfish service.” But then poets and philosophers often miss the mark, attempting prophesy.
The parents followed the usual course of those for the first time in that relation. Their love for each other, very intense, and by its sensitiveness witnessing after all that it was very selfish, got a new direction. They soon drifted into the charming fooleries of their like. Sometimes they petted the child unceasingly, and one was anon jealous of the other if surpassed in this. They each struggled for a recognition from the innocent, and debated as to whether the first babble of the little one was “mamma” or “papa.” Then there were times when they handled baby very reverently, as if it were something from God, or likely to break.
At such times they each, in heart, thanked God and gave the child, at least in part, to Him. Sometimes they called it “Davidah” or “darling,” and laughed as they assured each other, to assure themselves, that the baby looked wise as if understanding. Sometimes they played with it as if they were children and it a toy; sometimes they ministered to it with anxious care, while all the time they felt quite sure it was somehow of finer mold and fiber than any babe before on earth. They were just like all for the first time parents, and their raptures were now for good, being centered around the thought expressed by the sweet word home. Of course, the question of naming the child was discussed, and, of course, no name they could think of seemed quite good enough. Some days the child was given a dozen, and some days it had none; for all the time they kept trying to fit it.
In one thing, both parents were Jewish, namely, the desire to give their darling an appellation expressive of what it was or what they hoped it would be. They first agreed on “Angela,” but that was discarded as being a sort of advertisement of the quality of their treasure. In the constant selfishness of love they would keep it all secretly, sacredly to themselves, they said. They sought for many days some significant token or name that should be fully expressive of their thought, and yet by the three only be ever fully understood. One day Rizpah, always abrupt, still nursing an old superstition, said: “Call her Marah, a mournful, sweet, expressive title.”