Naomi

by Mrs. J. B. Webb

"Why do ye tremble?" cried Mary, fiercely: "his mother has eaten, and will not you? Oh! do ye say that I murdered him? my beautiful, my beloved! Did ye see me give him that last embrace, and did ye behold his sweet blue eyes as they smiled at me through their tears? I held him to my bursting heart, but the demon within me strangled him—it was not I that did it. Oh do not look so loathingly at me—it was the fiend that has so long possessed my soul. It was famine, Isaac, that drove me to it. It was better that his mother's hands should take away his life, than that her eyes should see him pine away and die for want!"

"Let me go, unnatural monster in a human form!" cried Isaac, bursting from her grasp; for she held his arm with the strength of a maniac, and fixed her fiery eyes upon him with a gaze that made his blood run cold. "Let me go, ere I plunge this dagger to thy heart."

"Oh, that would be the kindest deed that you could do for me," answered the wretched mother; "God and man have deserted me, and devils possess my soul. Here, give the fatal stroke, and end the miseries that I have no power to endure."

She sank at his feet, exhausted with her wild emotions and the effort she had made. Her eye was fixed on him, as he retreated slowly from that once radiant and joyous being, who now lay crushed beneath a load of misery and guilt. Ere he reached the door he turned again, and saw that the fire of that eye had fled, and the features were fixed in death.

Isaac and his fierce companions retraced their steps to the temple, and though they stepped unheedingly over many a livid corpse that lay in their path, yet they could not recall the dying look of the lonely heiress of Bethezob without a shudder. But the impression soon died away, and they again busily engaged in the strife and violence and ruthless war that filled the city.

For two days the scanty portion of food that Naomi was able to procure and reserve for her little favourite remained untouched; David did not appear, and she became very uneasy. She could not go out to seek him, for her father had strictly prohibited her from venturing beyond the gates of the house; and the alarm she had experienced on the day she went to the garden made her dread to expose herself to a similar danger. She waited anxiously until Zadok came home on the second evening, and then besought him to go to Mary's dwelling with some of his attendants, and ascertain whether she and her child yet lived, or whether either want or violence had put a period to their existence. Zadok was evidently distressed at her inquiries, and at length told her that they had both expired: but his manner bespoke something more than his words declared, and Naomi entreated him to inform her of all that he knew of the wayward Mary and her lovely little boy. Her father had heard the dreadful story of their death, for it had spread through the city, and caused a thrill of horror in every one who heard it; but he wished to avoid shocking the ears of his daughter with such a revolting account. Her inquiries however were so urgent, that he was compelled to own to her that David had expired by the hands of his mother, and that despair and misery had then speedily terminated her existence. More than that he did not disclose to her; but that was sufficient to fill her with grief and horror. She could not but weep at the sad fate of the engaging child in whom she had taken so much delight; and still more at the thought of the frantic state of misery to which his mother must have been reduced ere she could have committed so dreadful a deed. An asylum had been offered to Mary in the house of Zadok, when distress had first begun to be felt in the city; and though she had then rejected it with some contempt, and preferred trusting to her own resources, the offer had been renewed more than once. But Mary was too proud to accept it; she knew that her whole mode of life had ever been opposed to the purity and simplicity that marked the family of Zadok; and in the presence of Salome and her daughter she felt a restraint that was extremely irksome to her spirit. Her mind was weakened by suffering and constant privation; and she sat in her desolate house, brooding over her sorrows and fears until reason forsook her, and she was left a prey to passion and despair—an awful example of the depth of depravity to which the human mind may sink when unsupported by God's preventing grace, and a dreadful fulfilment of the worst of those woes that had been pronounced by the prophets of old on the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Salome's feeble remains of strength were daily declining, and she blessed the Lord who was so mercifully removing her from scenes of horror that harrowed her soul. The miserable death of her relative Mary and the little David preyed upon her mind, and she passed a restless night. Zadok and Naomi had not retired to rest, though it was past midnight, when they were all startled by a tremendous crash which appeared to come from the wall beyond the temple, where the greatest part of the Roman army was posted, and where they had just completed another set of military engines to replace those which had been destroyed by the bold stratagem of John. They listened in breathless anxiety, and expected every moment to hear the shouts of the Romans and the sounds of a desperate conflict. But nothing reached their ears until the day dawned, when Zadok hastened to discover the cause of their alarm. The noise had been occasioned, as he feared, by a large portion of the wall having fallen. It had been shaken by the blows of the engines during the preceding day, and the subterranean passage which John had dug to undermine the works of the enemy passed beneath that spot. It sunk, and the massy wall fell, leaving a heap of ruins.

The Romans rushed to the breach as soon as daybreak enabled them to perceive it; but they were disappointed in their hopes of an immediate entrance, by finding that John had, with great foresight, caused a second wall to be built within, as a precaution against the event which had just occurred. This new erection was, however, of no great strength, and Titus exhorted his men to make a vigorous effort to scale it. A Syrian, named Sabinus, volunteered to attempt the perilous enterprise, and eleven others followed his example. With their shields held over their heads, they pressed forward in spite of the shower of darts, and arrows, and stones that were hurled upon them from above. Sabinus had actually reached the summit of the wall when his foot slipped, and he fell on the inside. Instantly he was surrounded, and though he rose to his knees, and made a valiant defence, he was soon overpowered and slain. Three of his followers were also killed by stones, and the remainder carried back, all severely wounded, to the camp.

But the Romans were not discouraged. Two nights after the falling of the wall, Marcellus resolved to make a second effort to scale the breach and wall. His heart was wrung with agony at the protracted sufferings of the wretched Jews, and it died within him when he thought what might already have been the fate of Naomi. The only chance which seemed to remain of rescuing her, or any of her countrymen, from destruction, was for the besiegers to gain an entrance into the city ere famine and strife had completed the work of death that was going on within the walls. Twenty of the soldiers of the guard consented to follow him, with a standard-bearer and a trumpeter. He was also accompanied by his valiant father, who gloried in his son's intrepidity, and insisted on sharing the enterprise. Soon after midnight they passed silently through the ruins and reached the wall. They mounted it undiscovered by the guard, who had fallen asleep overpowered with fatigue. They were instantly slain, and then Marcellus commanded the trumpeter to sound a loud and stirring blast from the wall which was already gained. The sound aroused the other sentinels, and those appointed to guard the wall. They saw that the enemy had surprised them, but they knew not that the party was so small, and in a momentary panic they fled.

Titus also heard the victorious sound of the trumpet, and the shout of the triumphant band. He hastily summoned his officers and a strong party of soldiers, and hurried to the wall, where by the light of torches he saw his gallant young friend and his veteran father standing on the wall, where they had planted the standard of Rome. Marcellus informed him that the Jews had fled, and Titus with his troops succeeded in surmounting the wall and scaling the tower of Antonia before the affrighted Jews made any attempt to oppose them. They fled to the temple when they saw the enemy entering the tower, while numbers of the Romans gained access to the street below, by means of the opening into the subterranean passages that had been made by John underneath the wall, the entrance to which was now abandoned by the besieged.