“Rizpah my friend? that would be amusing, if it were not such a grim sarcasm. Oh, what a miserable race she led me!”
“Misery, like joy, in wedded life, is won or lost by the deed of two; not one. I shall not acquit my mother; but were not there two to blame?”
“Two? no; only one. I could not be peaceful with a panther.”
“Be not too severe, and think a little; did not you, after all, do much to make your wedded wife what she was at her worst?”
“What, I? Thou dost not think that?”
“Yes; I know the story of your espousal; your flight from Gerash, and then your after conflicts. You knew before you determined against all opposing, in the face of reasons most grave, and without any thought of your adaptation to each other, to wed, that your tempers, tastes, and trainings were in almost every thing apart.”
“Well, we loved each other sincerely; our marriage vows were honestly taken.”
“Marriage; that settled it forever! Did you as honestly keep as you took the vows, for better or worse?”
“Now that were impossible. Did you ever see your mother in rage, her muscles rising in a sort of serpentine wavings from her feet upward? Ugh! I hear her sibilant, hissing words of scorn, now. They’ll haunt me forever. She was a lotus in love, and a boa in wrath.”
“I may have seen her so, but out on the love that lets such visions displace memories of the best things; a daughter, nurtured by her, can not; a husband sworn on hymen’s altar, dare not forget.”