“I tried to set her right, Miriamne.”
“Not always with kindness unfailing. I’ve seen the scourge-marks on her heart. I’ve heard her moan as a wounded dove; no, more piteously, as a deserted wife and mother. You tried to set her right by forcing her to your faith, that, too, when the girl-wife was weak and exhausted by early maternity. You have been wont ever to pity profoundly the holy mother who recoiled fainting from the spectacle of her son scourged to crucifixion. That pity is a fine feeling; but since Mary’s day is passed, it is finer to evince a manly tenderness for living women moving toward their Calvary. How you waste your emotions on the dead! Mary Hyacinthus, Ichabod, have all, Rizpah nothing.”
“See here, daughter; let me look down into thy eyes. I’m of a mind to think the sun has gotten into thy brain. It gets into every body’s in this country.” So saying, he turned her face toward his own. It was a bungling effort on his part to parry her thrusts with ridicule, the last weapon of the defeated.
She was a little indignant, but yet too earnest to be diverted, and so followed up her advantage.
“You were the stronger, every way, and fenced well against your other self. The woman erred, sometimes grievously, perhaps, and you had your sweet retaliations. How sweet you can tell. Each blow at her, fell on me, my brothers and yourself. Oh, it’s the climax-revenge to lay open with giant thrusts, monstrous and keen, vein and nerve. One may mar a good purpose by pursuing it cruelly. Were not your efforts to set my mother right severe, sometimes?”
“Did the eloquent Hospitaler put these fine words together for thee, girl?” testily questioned Sir Charleroy.
“No matter who sent them, if they be true words. If you get angry, I’ll be wounded. You need not try hard to hurt me. I will strive to be all filial, while all loyal; but not more so to father than to mother.”
“Well, but she was a rheumatism to me.”
“So be it; still she was part of you. Does one dismember a limb that aches, or give it tenderer care than all others?”
“‘It is better,’ said Solomon, ‘to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.’ I got heartily weary of an ache that ached because it ached.”