A BATTLE OF GIANTS AT BOZRAH.
“Sleep—the ghostly winds are blowing!
No moon abroad—no star is glowing.
The river is deep and the tide is flowing
To the land where you and I are going!
We are going afar,
Beyond moon or star,
To the land where the sinless angels are!
I lost my heart to your heartless sire
(’Twas melted away by his looks of fire),
Forgot my God, and my father’s ire,
All for the sake of a man’s desire;
But now we’ll go
Where the waters flow,
And make our bed where none shall know.”—“_The Mother’s Last
Song._”—BARRY CORNWALL.
“How shall we order the child, and how shall we do.”—Judges
xiii. 12.
Sir Charleroy and his consort took up their abode in one of the many
deserted ancient stone houses of the city of Bozrah. The latter, situated
in one of the most fertile plains of earth, once having upward of one
hundred thousand inhabitants, several times having risen to metropolitan
splendor, ages ago sank into neglect, decay and desolation. But with
wonderful persistence that city preserves the records, or relics, of
what it was in better, greater days. The antiquarian to-day finds in and
around Bozrah the dwellings, palaces and temples of many and various
peoples, some piled in strata-like courses, one above the other, each
layer the tombstone of its predecessor; some as fine as they were
forty centuries ago. The annalist there has at hand as an open book
the achievements of some of the mightiest men of earth, physically.
The latter were contemporary with that line of God’s moral giants,
of which Abraham, Moses and David were representative leaders first,
and Christ finally. The strata of Bozrah tell of differing policies,
politics, religions; all alike in one thing—the attempt to build upon
the buttresses of giant force; but they present in the end the one
result—failure; all being equally dead at the last, if not equally
herculean at the first. Sheer robustness in the armies of Rome, the
Turk, Alexander, and Og wrought out their best about the Bashan cities,
and in that theater played the eternally losing game of all such. It
seems as if God had chosen that part of all the world to illustrate
this great lesson of His providence. The Roman, Mohammedan, Greek, and
others like them, there had their brutal and sensuous existence. There
the Crusader carried also his banners; but the end of the Rephaim was
the forerunner and prophecy of all the other giantesque gatherings that
followed after them. Each passing race and dynasty left its monuments and
tokens of possession; but of all, those of the first, the giants, are the
most enduring, most wonderful. These dateless, huge, rugged, fort-like
dwellings, standing just as they did four thousand years ago, except
that they are mostly unoccupied, are impressive monuments and reminders
of the mighty denizens who once abode within them. There are ruins of
temples, palaces, houses of commerce and places of amusement, but chiefly
of homes; the latter, significantly, instructively, being the best
preserved of all. Sir Charleroy observed this circumstance, and casually
remarked to Rizpah, as they bestowed their effects in one of the ancient
domiciles:
“If ever I take to building, I’ll build abiding places for people, only.
Such are the most lasting.”
But while he came thus near to a royal truth, he did not make it his
own. It passed through his mind and he felt its light, as one might
that from the wing of a ministering spirit, while his eyes were holden
and his back turned. He immediately left the angelic thought, to go
wandering through years of misery, before coming back face to face with
it again. Sir Charleroy and Rizpah, a western soldier and a woman of
Israel, two giants in their way, began a new career at Bozrah. It was
providential. Measuring power by the only available test at hand, namely,
what it accomplishes, it was manifest long ago to all that the brawn of
the Cyclops was not the master force of the word. Hercules cleansed the
earth of mythical, not real evils. Sir Charleroy and Rizpah are fittingly
brought to the theater of the giants for the purpose of testing the
potency of giantesque sentimentality and stubborn, mighty ardor. To this
end, two will do as well as a nation, and a decade will be as conclusive
as a score of generations. The husband and wife entered Bozrah gladly,
and quickly adapted themselves to their new surroundings. They were both
very impressible, and there were many things in their new environments
that impressed and stimulated them. Nature’s face and locations may
be changed by man, but he can not change her heart. She, on the other
hand, is invincible in her conquests of both his face and inner being.
Climate and environments determine the characters and careers of the
majorities. The sleets of the North, in time, will goad the sensuous
Turk or Hottentot to high activity, while the Cossack or Esquimaux,
under tropical suns soon fall into luxuriousness and laziness. Bozrah
began its molding of the knight and his wife. Rizpah and Sir Charleroy
were at first attracted to Giant Land by the hugeness of its monuments
and ghostly greatness of its record. They received at Bozrah their first
impulse to settle and make a home. Probably they were largely influenced
by the conviction that, in its way, there was nothing more entrancing
or majestic beyond. For the best results to them, the second selection
was altogether unfortunate. They had made their home in the midst of
battle-fields, and the atmosphere that hung over all things was like
that over a defeated army, sullenly submitting. The new comers from the
beginning, in their new home, were immersed in ghostly memories, and that
atmosphere so like the breath of a bound yet struggling giant. They were
affected more than they realized by all these things.
“No more tours, no more worlds, for us to conquer!” exclaimed the knight.
Rizpah, her cheerfulness of mind largely recovered, replied to this
remark of Sir Charleroy with a bantering laugh, at the same time pointing
upward. Quickly, and with retort cruel as a giant’s javelin, he cried:
“Alas, so soon Rizpah seeks my final departure from her!”
The cavalier was no more; it was the brusque and gross within him that
spoke. Had he been courtly, even without being Christian, he would have
been considerate enough not to have cruelly jested concerning that which
lay in his wife’s heart as a possible and sad fact. Often the thought of
eternal separation from her husband, even from eternal hope, haunted her
now. Her husband knew this.
For a moment his answer seemed to stun her; then the affectations of
pouting on her mobile face, coming when she pointed upward, changed into
lines of anger. A hot flush mounting up to the roots of her hair, hung
out the warning signal.
The knight, pretending not to observe the change, twined his arms about
his wife and mockingly sighed:
“Poor girl! I can find no wings on thee. I once thought thou hadst such.
They must have dropped off.”
There was no reply. He then began to retreat, to placate, and to that
intent drew her closer and closer to his heart, until, embracing her, his
hands clasped; but, for the first time since the event near Gerash, when
the Arabs were vanquished, his caress was without response. He tried a
thrust thus:
“Well, beloved, since thou dost banish me, bestow a kiss of long
farewell.”
Quickly, Rizpah flung aside his embracing arms and cried: “Shechemite!
I’m no Dinah, won by false professions!”
“_Shechem was more honorable than all the house of his father_,” quoted
the knight in reply.
“He loved himself, his passions; to these gods he gave up with all
devotion, and they immolated him. That was good!”
“Why, Rizpah, thou art pettish.”
“‘Rizpah!’ Thou art adroit in using bitter similes; a brutalizing power,
when brutally used! Now, call me ‘Jarnsaxa.’ Thou toldst me, yesterday,
how that mighty male god of the Norse, Thor, while hating her people,
to the death, stole Jarnsaxa. Yea, and how many giants fell for women.
Perhaps thou didst want me to pity thee. We are in Giant Land now, and
thou canst begin to play Colossus!”
The knight was startled, and quickly entreated: “My queen, lets drop
the masks; no more of this; forget my sarcasm, and I’ll forgive the
recriminations. A truce and pardon, in the name of love. What says
Esther?”
“‘Esther?’ Thou calledst me that when cavalier, turning lover. Thou art
neither now!” The sentence ended in a petulant sob.
“Oh, stay now. It was playfulness. I—there, now! Canst thou not brook a
little playfulness from me?”
“Playfulness? Bah! Ye men play so like lions, forgetting to keep the
claws cushioned! But, now thou hadst better be going, saint—the only
one here. Go, now, right along to heaven. They want thee there. They
want thee, not me.” Then she choked back another sob, but instantly
thereafter, dashing the rising tear from her eyes, she bitterly
exclaimed: “At any rate, thou’lt have company!”
“Whom, pray?”
“The begetter and chief of all restless vagabonds!”
“So; I never heard of him. Has he a name, my dear?”
The knight was sarcastic, because he was nettled.
Rizpah’s eyes glittered with the fire of offended pride, and she quickly
began in measured tone, as if in soliloquy, and alone, to quote Job’s
record of satan’s joining the assembly of the sons of God:
“_There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before
the Lord, and satan came also. And the Lord said whence camest thou? Then
satan said from going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and
down in it._”
“My wife responds to my penitence with bitterness; but even the pagans
were wiser. They ever took the gall from the animals offered to Juno,
goddess of wedlock.”
“Thy wife promised to be thy helpmate and give thee all she had. Now,
just forget thy fine paganism, being a Christian long enough to remember
that I’m thy helpmate in all things, even in bitterness. I give thee all,
even returning thy giving.”
“Thou shouldst not make so much of my little misstep.”
“Nothing is little with which one must constantly live. Great breaks
grow from little fractures. One may stand a blow, but its the constant
fretting that roughs the heart-strings to woe unendurable. Thou hast a
habit of playfully hurting.”
“Well, this has been a day at school; there ought to be a school for
husbands! We do not half understand the fine, sensitive creatures that
companion us.”
“Oh, thou thoughtst thou wert a woman-reader!”
“Were I to see an angel with a body like a harp, eyes like the
unsearchable ocean, heart of flame, arms like flowering vines, covered
with prismatic wings, I’d be no more puzzled and abashed than I am now
by my high-strung, fine-tempered Rizpah.”
“Puzzled! abashed! I’d help thee pity thy wounded conceit, but that I
know that thou art soon to ascend. Art thou going now!”
“I’m afraid not, since I’ve so many more sins than graces. When elephants
soar with butterfly wings, thou mayst look for my departure. Till then
I’ll stay here and practice the patience of Job, beset with his rambling
devil.”
“How elegantly the cavalier uses simile in coining epithets.”
“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.”
“Why, wife, that means ‘bitterness.’”
“Bitterness, since I believe that somewhere, somehow, there is bitterness
enough in store for her—and me with her.”
“I’d prefer ‘Mary,’ my wife; surely this little angel is to be all like
that blessed one.”
Then there was more strife, but of a rather patient kind, which ended
in a compromise, they calling the child Miriamne, each in mind meaning
different from the other; the one Marah, the other Mary. But on the
heels of this came soon the graver problem, How should the babe be
reared, in Jewish faith or Christian? It was the old, old story of a
difficulty seemingly easily adjusted to all, except to those who have
actually met it, and in this case, as usual, the two parties fanatically
opposed each other. In the name of sweet religion they loyally served
the devil for a time. The highest achievement of a creed or faith is the
soothing and elevation of a home here, or the exalting of it heavenward
for hereafter. That is a travesty of piety which wrecks the substance
of joy for the shell of a dogma. This stricture is easily written and
may pass without dissent, the reader immediately falling into the error
denounced. Of course, as usual, these two parents began the discussion of
the subject. At intervals they cautiously pressed their arguments, but
each unwaveringly moved toward his or her point. They were like advancing
armies, firing occasional shots, but surely approaching a mighty issue.
They pretended to argue the matter by times, but it was a farce, for each
in mind irrevocably had predetermined the conclusion. Time sped on a year
or more, then the conflict fully came.
“Rizpah, we were wed by a Christian, let us take the fruit of that
compact to Christian baptism.”
“The first act was an error; we shall not atone for it by repetitions in
kind! The child is mine; I decline.”
“And mine, so I request.”
“A mother imperils her whole life for her child, and unreservedly gives
to it part of herself; justice, humanity, should give the child to the
mother, so far as may be.”
“But even under thy faith, I, the father, am the head of the house.”
“Under my faith the nurture and training of children belong chiefly to
the mother, and my faith has been the finest society-builder of the
world in the past. Thou hast often recounted to me the deeds of that
golden, heroic time of my people, when the great Maccabean family led us
and inspired us. Well, then, the mothers had exclusive control of the
daughters until they were wed, and so they had grand daughters among the
Maccabees.”
“Well, we differ in belief; we had better compromise.”
“We dare not barter a little soul to do it.”
“Well, briefly then, being lord of this home, I command that the
grace-giving sacrament be sought for our Mary.”
“My faith, to which thou didst first appeal, forbids fathers to command
their children to walk through idolatrous fires. Marah shall not.”
“Hush; I only want the loved one inducted into the true faith.”
“Mine is the older and truer.”
“With thee argument is futile; I insist——”
“If the father is a foreigner, Jewry’s rule is that the children are to
be called by the mother’s name and regarded as of her family. Make such
law as thou choosest for thy family but not for mine.”
“I’ll end this,” cried Sir Charleroy, seizing the child, as if to hasten
then to seek some priest’s ministry.
Rizpah’s eyes glittered with sullen purpose. She sprang before him, and
hissed:
“Our fathers escaped at all cost from Egypt. I’ll not go back, nor Marah.”
The knight was surprised, and his looks expressed it as he said:
“Dost thou rave?”
“Oh, no, I was just remembering that a bearded serpent was the Egyptian
symbol of deity; something like a man. You Christians would have all
husbands gods to their families! No bearded serpent for mine!”
“Heavens, woman! thinkest thou thy scorn and vituperation can stay me?”
So saying he pushed, or rather half flung the woman from him. He had no
conception of the rage that any thing like a blow evokes in the heart of
a woman that could love as once did Rizpah. On his part it was intended
as a masterpiece of strategy, in the hope that the woman would swoon,
then surrender in the weakness of following hysteria. The act was hateful
to him, but he justified it by the end sought, yet missed that end.
Rizpah was a tigress roused, and like many another mother, beast or
human, when the fight is once for offspring was endowed with sudden,
supernatural strength. She sprang toward the hammock, plucking her dagger
meanwhile from its hiding-place.
“Heaven defend us, woman!” cried Sir Charleroy, glancing about for a
means of prevention, “thou wouldst not do murder?”
“Oh, no, thou art not fit to die; but hear me; this blade, consecrated
to defense from dishonor, saved me once. Dost thou remember? It will do
it again, if need be. The giver sleeps, but his stern charge haunts me
still. ‘Protect at any cost from dishonor!’”
“Wouldst thou shed blood of any here!”
“Sir Charleroy saw me slay the Turk. Had I failed, thou falling, this
blade would have found my own heart. Push me onward by thy imperiousness
and I will slay the babe and then myself! Methinks, it would be an
atonement for which my parent would forgive my breaking of his heart. Ah,
then sweet rest; life’s tumults over! God would pity the tempest-tossed
soul that, through such bitterness, flung itself on Him.”
“Dost mean all this, Rizpah?”
“Can I trifle? Ask thyself. Have I ever? My desperate sincerity made me
thy wife, but now it impels me to defy all thy attempts to make me thy
minion, unthinking echo or slave; or worse, the ruiner of that girl.”
“Well, then, woman, since thou or I must yield and I can not, thou wilt
not, I execute my before announced purpose to have my lawful authority
acknowledged with thee or——”
“Say the rest, find peace away from me——”
“Which?” sternly demanded the knight.
“As thou dost wish, only I’ll not give up my child to Christian
sacrifice.”
“Then we can not live in peace together.”
“To which I reply, that God never ordained marriage to bind people to the
home when they can only for each other in that home make a very Tartarus!”
The knight was humiliated. He had believed that the woman’s heart could
not bear the thought of separation, and now to find her willing to give
him up, rather than her will, her faith, hurt his pride. But they had
made an utter crossing of purposes. He ran out of their stone house, his
heart as stony. A little way off he paused, looked back, and said, “For
the last time, Rizpah, what dost thou say?”
“Go; once for love I gave up all. Again I do it; I give thee up for the
highest of all love, the love of a mother for her child!”
Caressingly Rizpah embraced the infant; and then fell on her knees with
her face averted from her husband. He took one glance, and realizing the
defeat of his strong will by that kneeling woman, angrily hurried away.
The die was cast. He turned his back on Rizpah, swearing that he would
never more return.
For a few days Rizpah lived in a crazy dream; now laughing as she thought
of her victory; again letting her maiden love re-assert itself; then
assuring her heart that all was over and well as it was. But a woman who
imagines that reproach or even open violence can utterly extirpate love
that once completely possessed her, knows not her own heart. Especially
is this true if to that heart, she at times, press, lovingly, a child
begotten in that love, and the form bearing the impress of that man for
whom sometime she would have willingly died.
* * * * *
One night the baby cried piteously, being ill, and Rizpah was feeling
very lonely because so anxious for it. She had sometimes, since Sir
Charleroy’s departure, prattled with the baby calling “papa” and
“Charleroy,” mother-like, woman-like. Self-condemning, for this was a
half confession that she would have the little one think, if it thought
at all, that she, the mother, was not to blame for the absence. The baby
had caught some names and in its moaning, feverishly cried: “Abbaroy,
Abbaroy; I want my Abbaroy.” The cry was piercing to the mother’s heart
and conscience. She even then wished for the husband’s return. Indeed,
some hot tears fell as she prayed God to send “papa Charleroy back.” The
tie of marriage, potent beyond all of earth, now drew her away toward the
absent one, and she then began to marvel how easily they had separated;
how lightly they had regarded the bonds which after all tightly held
them. When lives have blended and been tied together by other lives, it
is indeed a prophesy of union “until death do us apart.”
“Abbaroy, Abbaroy! I want my Abbaroy,” still piteously cried the sick
child. The night without was raging; the little lamp sent dancing shadows
over the black walls of her room and an unutterable loneliness took
possession of the woman. One by one thoughts like these arose; “Father
dead, mother dead; husband as good as dead; perhaps really so, and my
child like to die! What if she should die thus crying for her father!
Oh, God spare me this! I’d go mad by her corpse.” “Abbaroy, I want my
Abbaroy,” sobbed the child in her sleep. The mother heard the waving
palms without. Her vivid imagination turned them into persons, spirits.
They seemed to be her dead ancestors and they caught up the cry of her
child rebukingly “Abbaroy, I want my Abbaroy.” She swooned now and slept.
In the sleep there came a dream. She thought she saw her daughter, grown
to womanhood, but pale and sad. She had the hand of her mother and was
drawing her toward the sea. Whenever the mother drew back the daughter
wailed “Abbaroy, I want my Abbaroy.” Presently their feet touched the
water edge, she saw a ship, floating at anchor, but with sails spread
partly; on its stern was the name, “_England_.” The captain stood by the
vessel’s side, observing her. At last he cried: “Well, how long must we
wait for thee?” A wave seemed to dash against her face and she awakened.
The heavy window blind of stone had swung open, the rain was beating in
on her. She started up and felt for her child, half fearfully lest a
corpse should meet her touch. But she found her hands clasping a little
form with fast beating heart and burning skin. The light had gone out,
but there alone in that desolate home amid the ruins of past ages, the
woman bowed in agonizing prayer. The balm of broken hearts was sought and
she for a time was clothed and in her right mind. She arose, serenely, in
the morning the cry of the sea captain of her dream in her ears, and the
firm resolve in her heart to seek her husband even in far-off England;
with him to try for the things that make for peace. Then she opened the
iron-bound chest that had come to her from her father and took therefrom
a roll of the ‘_Kethrubim_’ and read. And it so happened that seeking to
refresh her mind as to the story of how the giant Sampson got honey out
of the slain lion’s carcass, that she might more fully apply the meaning
to her own experience, she came to the story of his birth. That story
fixed her attention for days. It was like a new revelation to her. And
she read and read these words over and over:
“And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the Danites, whose name _was_
Manoah.
“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto the woman, and said unto her,
Behold now, thou shalt conceive and bear a son.
“Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came unto
me, and his countenance _was_ like an angel of God, and he said unto me,
Behold thou shalt bear a son.
“Then Manoah entreated the Lord and said, O my Lord, let the man of God
which thou didst send come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do
unto the child.
“And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God came
again unto the woman.
“And the woman made haste, and ran, and shewed her husband.
“And Manoah arose, and went after his wife and came to the man.
“And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass. How shall we order the
child, and _how_ shall we do unto him?
“And the angel of the Lord said unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto the
woman let her beware.
“So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered _it_ upon a rock
unto the Lord: and _the angel_ did wondrously; and Manoah and his wife
looked on.
“For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the
altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar: and
Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground.”
And as Rizpah read, little by little, the truth and beauty of the scene
and its words dawned upon her. Thus she meditated: “This is the way
God brought forth His giant deliverer, Samson; God appeared to the
woman first, but she hasted to tell of the promised blessing to her
husband.” When she thought of how that angel-led wife led her husband,
she remembered her own fanatical bitterness and was condemned. Then she
remembered how Manoah and his wife, together, asked how they should
order their child and how, as together they bowed before the Spirit, he
ascended in glory over them. “Oh,” she moaned within herself, “if we had
only put aside our differences and, forgetting all else, just so sought
together the Divine directings!” It was evening as she meditated, and
she said within herself: “If ever I can get nigh Sir Charleroy’s heart
I’ll tell him all this, and before the altar of a new consecration we’ll
give ourselves and ours to God, just this way.” There came a wondrous joy
to her heart and the palms that seemed to moan rebukingly without that
other night, “Abbaroy, Abbaroy, I want my Abbaroy,” this night reminded
her some way vaguely of the beating of mighty wings, approaching nearer
and nearer. She felt no longer rage, as she thought about the often
bepraised Mary of her husband, but on the other hand, wished she knew
more about her, were more like her. It was the woman in her, yearning for
a mother.