“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.