were their neighbours hid themselves in caves, thickets, and rocks.
They were not armed, for the Philistines had forbidden the working of
iron, lest their slaves should have anything wherewith they might
defend themselves. Having defeated the Ammonites, Saul went up to
Gilgal, and a great crowd came after him trembling. He waited there
seven days for Samuel, and meanwhile the people began to slip away from
him. What was he to do? He could wait no longer, and he commanded the
burnt-offering to be brought to him. Just as he had made an end of the
sacrifice, Samuel appeared, and Saul went out to meet him and take his
blessing. But Samuel turned upon him and doomed him, because he had
meddled with the priest's office. He was to be cast out from his
kingship, and another was chosen in his place. That was the root of
all my lord's trouble, as we shall afterwards see--the seed of the
madness which made his life worse than death. What had he done?
Nothing, but set fire to that miserable beast. Had he slain a man, or
robbed the widow or the fatherless, or defrauded those who came to him
for judgment, his punishment would have been just; but that he should
be deposed because, in his extremity against the Lord's enemies, he had
taken upon him to do what Samuel neglected to do, was a strange
sentence from the Lord. Would you or I deal so with our friends? would
we give them no place for repentance? would we let the penalty endure
when, the heart is changed and forgiveness is sought? The Lord's ways
are wonderful. But it was Samuel's doing. If it had not been for
Samuel, the Lord would have shown mercy. Samuel was ever the priest,
and had no compassion in him. He had been chosen as a child, and he
never forgot he was the Lord's selected servant. He hated Saul because
Saul was king, and he loved to show his power over him. Before that
day in Gilgal, he had called down thunder and lightning from heaven to
show that Jehovah listened to him, and to prove that Jehovah resented
the request that the people should have some one to command them other
than the sons of Eli. He hated Saul because the people obeyed him and
fled to him when they were in danger. Who could help obeying him; who
was there who knew him who did not love to obey? However, he was
cursed--cursed for a ceremony of the Law; and that dancing David, the
man who took Uriah's wife and basely murdered Uriah, was said to be the
man after God's own heart.
Soon afterwards the evil spirit fell upon my lord. Samuel had
commanded him to smite the Amalekites, and to spare not men or women,
infants or sucklings, oxen or sheep, camel or ass. Saul gathered his
soldiers together and lay in wait in the valley. In his mercy, for he
was ever tender-hearted, he warned the Kenites that they might escape.
He then smote the Amalekites from Havilah to Shur, but he took Agag
alive, and spared some of the spoil. When the battle was over, Samuel
came to meet him, and rebuked him as if he had been a child for what he
called rebellion and stubbornness. The priest stood up before the
king, and told him that his rebellion was as witchcraft, and his
stubbornness as idolatry. "Because thou hast rejected the word of the
Lord," he cried, "He hath also rejected thee from being king."
Rebellion, stubbornness! Saul was neither rebellious nor stubborn. He
had smitten the Amalekites; in obedience to Samuel's command, he had
done what he hated to do; he had slaughtered young and old, but he had
saved Agag, and although he humbled himself before Samuel, and prayed
him to remain, he would not. Saul laid hold upon the skirt of his
mantle; but he departed, and it was rent, and he cursed Saul, and
declared that as the garment was rent, so had the Lord rent the kingdom
of Israel from him that day, and given it to another better than he.
Then Samuel called Agag unto him, and hewed the unarmed man in pieces,
and declared he would see Saul no more. Now Saul was brave, the
bravest of the brave, but he greatly feared at times what he called his
Terror. What it was which troubled him none ever rightly knew. He was
not mad as others are mad, for his senses never left him, and he was
always the counsel and the strength of the nation, whom they all sought
in their distress. But something had caught him of which he could not
rid himself, and he would come to me with wild eyes, and clasp me in
his arms. I could not comfort him; and all I heard was a strange word
or two about a Face which haunted him and would not leave him. I could
not comfort him, but it was to me nevertheless he always fled; and
although he spoke so little, for he dared not name his Terror, he said
to me more than he has said to any man or woman: it was I, it was I
more than any other who knew the secrets of the king's soul. My belief
is that Samuel brought the Terror on him. He never forgot that
dreadful day when Agag was murdered, and it was always before his eyes
that he was doomed, and that there was another man in the land, who was
to rule in his stead. I tried to appease him. I told him that life to
all of us is short, that in the grave there is forgetfulness, and bade
him drink wine, lie in my bosom, and shut out the morrow, but it was of
no avail. There was nothing to be dreaded in the thought that some one
would supplant him, and other men would have endured it in peace; but
it was the constant presence of the thought, the impossibility of
getting rid of it, which darkened the sun for him. Day after day,
night after night, this one thing was before him. It was as if he were
bound to a corpse, and ever dragged it after him. Higher than any of
the people from his shoulders and upwards, like a lion for courage, and
yet he would have fled even to Death from this thing, for he could not
face it. What a mockery is the strength of the strongest! A word from
the Lord can cause the greatest to grovel in the dust! It was thought
that music would help him, and they brought to him David, who was
skilled with the harp, and had moreover a ruddy, cheerful countenance.
Gay and light of heart was he, and as he sang and played the Terror
would sometimes loosen its hold, and Saul was himself again, but it
never left him for long.
Much has been made by Saul's enemies of his hatred of David. It came
in this way. Saul loved David, and made him a captain, and they went
out together to war against the Philistines. When they returned, the
women, smitten with his pretty face--they were always ready to go after
him, and he after them--sang aloud in the streets that Saul had slain
his thousands and David his ten thousands. The Terror was on Saul; he
believed David was Samuel's friend, and David and the Terror became
one. He eyed David from that day. He was not blameworthy. It was the
Evil Spirit from God, and the Evil Spirit put a fixed thought in his
mind, that if he could but remove David, the Terror would depart.
Although I hated the son of Jesse from the beginning, I made light of
my lord's dread of him, but who can reason against an Evil Spirit from
God; and while David was playing the second time, my lord cast a
javelin at him to kill him. When the Evil Spirit departed, the desire
to destroy David departed with it. After Saul had cast the javelin,
Jonathan pleaded with his father for David, and Saul listened, and
swore that no harm should befall him; but when David soon afterwards
returned from another battle with the Philistines, the Spirit came
again and turned David's music into an instrument of torture, and again
put the javelin in Saul's hand, and strove through Saul to strike David
with it. Hard ridden was Saul by the Spirit at that time, and he went
to Ramah to see Samuel; and when he saw him, he, the king, my beloved,
was so beset that he tore off his clothes, and lay down naked all
night. When he came back at the feast of the new moon, he sat down to
meat with his princes, and with Abner and Jonathan; but David was not
there. He asked the reason of his absence, and Jonathan explained that
David had leave to go to Bethlehem to visit his father. Jonathan said
nothing more, but the Evil Spirit descended even at the feast, in the
company of all the lords, and Saul imagined that Jonathan was plotting
against him; and in his fury, possessed by the Lord, he cast his spear
against Jonathan also, his own best beloved son. That was the misery
of it; the Spirit brought him to violence, not only against those who
were his enemies, but against those whom he loved. To me, though, he
was ever tender, and over our love the Spirit had no power. Jonathan's
anger at the time was fierce; but Jonathan was noble of heart--his
father's son, without his father's affliction; and he knew, when he
came to himself, that it was not the father whom he honoured who had
done this deed. He went out and warned David, but he did not go with
him, and presently he returned into the city and comforted his father.
When David had gathered together his four hundred knaves in rebellion,
Saul sat in Gibeah under the tree there, and his servants stood round
him in council. They were all of them valiant and faithful, but he
broke out against them, and accused them of conspiring with David
against him. "There is none," he cried, "that sheweth me that my son
hath made a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you that
is sorry for me." "None of you that is sorry!" His suffering was so
great, and so little was it understood, that he believed no one cared
for him, and at times he said bitter things which kept men apart from
him, and sent some of them to David. His anguish was all the greater
because he thought Jonathan, his son, whom he so much loved, had become
estranged from him, and secretly communicated with David, and was
content to give up his succession to the royal crown, and take the
second place when David should be upon the throne. But again I say it,
no harsh word ever came to me, although for days he would hardly speak;
and then, suddenly, as he sat by me, he would lay his head upon my
neck, and tears would come of which he was ashamed.
The never-ceasing pursuit of David was sad even to me, and yet when the
Spirit left him to himself Saul relented. When David was in Engedi,
and hard pressed, he came out to Saul and submitted himself to him. He
boasted that he could have slain Saul--what a boast to make! that he
had spared the Lord's anointed and the father of Jonathan, his chosen
friend!
The king was much given to sudden change. Sometimes his mood would
leave him, and his face become clear in a moment, like the heavens in a
thunderstorm when the lightning has spent itself, and the wind shifts,
and the blue sky in an instant is revealed. Never, when this happened,
did he resist, and by constraint remain in his sorrow, but sang and was
glad, and if I was beside him, delighted himself with me. The happiest
of men would he have been, even as a king, if the Evil Spirit from the
Lord would have left him. He was overcome with his ancient love for
David, and wept, and acknowledged, although it was false, that David
was more righteous than he, and prayed for the Lord's blessing upon
him. Yet even then the ever-present Fear was before him. "I know
well," he said, "that thou shalt surely be king, and that the kingdom
of Israel shall be established in thine hand." And he made David swear
that he would not cut off the seed of the royal house, so that the name
of Saul might live. And David sware: David sware, the blaspheming
liar, who gave up to the Gibeonites my sons, and the sons of Merab. It
was Jonathan, whom Saul had in mind when he caused David to swear; but
Saul's prayer was but breath, for the Lord cut off Jonathan in battle,
and Saul was the only king of the house of Kish.
After Samuel's death, David, with his men, went over to the
Philistines, who gave him Ziklag as the place of his abode. He played
the traitor to Achish as he had done to Saul, and he went out against
the Geshurites, the Gezrites, and the Amalekites, the friends of
Achish, murdering both men and women, and returned and lied to Achish,
telling him he had fought against Judah and its allies. Had it been
his purpose to hide himself and to do good service to his master Saul
in the war which the Philistines were preparing for him, his treachery
might have excused him; but he had no mind to assist Saul or Israel.
He sang a song after Gilboa in memory of the king and Jonathan, but he
came not near them in the day of battle, and he profited by their
overthrow. He brought his men to Achish, as if he would go down with
him to the fight; but the Philistines distrusted him, and sent him back
to Ziklag. Who knows what he intended? He told Achish that he meant
to take his part against Saul, but no word of his could ever be
believed. Nevertheless, I doubt not that he would have been as good as
his promise if it had been permitted to him. It is certain that he
knew what was about to happen, and that, if he had been loyal to his
prince, he would have striven to assist him.
I remember that dreadful day before the day of Gilboa. The host of the
Philistines came and pitched in Shunem as the sand of the desert for
number. Saul had gathered all Israel together, but they were fewer
than the Philistines, and disheartened. He knew, moreover, that David
and his men were with the enemy; and as he went out that morning, and
saw the host of the Philistines lie upon the hillside, he greatly
trembled, not with fear of death, for he never feared to die, but
because his Terror was upon him, and the Lord refused to speak to him.
He inquired of Him, but the Lord answered him not. The high priest had
brought the ephod, but was dumb, and the prophets heard nothing. Two
nights before the day of the battle, he had sought the Lord for a
dream, and had lain down by my side in hope. The dream came, but it
was a dream of the Terror, and he shrieked and turned, and clasped me
in his arms; and I soothed him, and asked him what he had dreamed, but
he could not tell--it was a horror, awful, shapeless, which he dared
not try to utter; and he clasped me again, me wretched, clasped me for
the last time. He rose and went out in the morning early; went round
his army by himself. He was alone, and he knew that God had forsaken
him.
In his extremity he bethought him of witchcraft. In his zeal for God,
which availed him nothing, he had cast out of the land all those who
dealt with familiar spirits, but one was still left at Endor. To her
he went to obtain some voice from the unknown world, thinking that by
chance light might shine in upon his despair. But when he came to the
woman, and she asked him what spirit she should call, he could do
nothing but ask for Samuel. He feared him, and yet he desired to see
him. It was always strange to me that he, such a king, should be so
subdued by Samuel's presence. It was so in life, and it was so in
death. The spirit of Samuel rose, and Saul humbled himself before the
shadow. Alas, Samuel had learned no pity through death, and his ghost
was as fierce as the living man of years gone. He had passed into the
land of emptiness and vanity, yet his wrath burnt as if mortal blood
had been in him. Saul bowed unto him and told him his trouble, how he
was sore distressed, for the Philistines made war upon him, and God had
departed from him, and answered him not. It was a dreadful sight, so
the woman herself told me afterwards, a king abasing himself before a
spectre of a priest and craving mercy. The worst foe whom Saul had in
the land would have felt his heart touched, and the wicked woman
herself was moved with great compassion. If success could not be
promised, at least some comfort might have been given, but Samuel was
bitterness itself; terrible he always was to me, so bitter and so hard
that I shuddered at him. He turned upon Saul and denounced him, he,
the dead, denounced him who was about to die, and declared that the
Lord was his enemy. Enemy! for what, because he had spared Agag? And
yet that was, in a measure, the reason; for Saul was too much of a man
for the priest, and therefore the priest set up David against him. The
ghost stood there, and doomed the king. "The Lord," he cried, "hath
rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even
to David, because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, nor
executedst His fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done
this thing unto thee this day. Moreover, the Lord will also deliver
Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines; and to-morrow shalt
thou and thy sons be with me: the Lord also shall deliver the host of
Israel into the hand of the Philistines." For this cause Saul was to
fall, and his three sons, and there was to be a great slaughter of
Israel. When David the adulterer murdered Uriah, was that not a worse
crime, yet was his punishment as Saul's? And what punishment there was
fell not on David as it would have fallen upon my lord and upon me.
After David's son died, he straightway rose up, eat and drank, and went
in unto Bathsheba the whore; and she, the wife of Uriah, whom he had
murdered, submitted to be comforted by him.
When Saul heard the words of Samuel, he fell straightway in the
darkness all along on the earth, and there was no strength in him, for
he had eaten no bread all the day nor all the night. The woman offered
him bread, but he sat on the bed and would not eat. At last, as the
morning was breaking, he consented to eat, and he went away to make
ready for the fight. He was assured he would perish that day, and that
before the sun set he would be in Sheol with Samuel, bat he did not
play the coward and nee. He fought as the king he was, but the
Philistines were too many for him; the curse from the Lord was upon the
Israelites, so that they feared and fled. Jonathan, with Abinadab and
Melchishua, his brothers, were around Saul to the last, but they were
slain. The men-at-arms dared not come near Saul, but the archers
pressed him sorely from afar, and he could not close with them, and he
saw his end was at hand. He would not have the Philistines take him
alive, wounded for sport, even if they might spare his life; and he
therefore prayed his armour-bearer to thrust him through, but his
armour-bearer would not. Thereupon Saul took his sword, and fell upon
it; and his armour-bearer fell likewise upon his sword, and died with
him. The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they
found Saul and his sons dead on Gilboa, and carried off their bodies,
shamefully using them. But though the alarm at the victory was great,
there were men in Israel who dared do anything for their master, the
men of Jabesh-gilead, who remembered what Saul had done for them
against the Ammonites; and they went by night and rescued the bodies,
and burnt them, and buried them under this tree in Jabesh, whence they
afterwards came to Zelah, where I shall lie.
David, when he heard that Saul was dead, sang a song in his
praise--David turned everything into songs; but nevertheless he made
himself king, and warred against the house of his master. Ever singing
and dancing! When the Ark was brought from the house of Obed-edom,
David leaped, and danced, and played before it like an empty fool.
Michal, who was her father's own daughter, despised her husband--as
well she might--for his folly, and rebuked him because he behaved as a
vain fellow rather than as a king; but she was abused, and he told her
that if she did not honour him, he would be honoured by her maids; and
this was true, for he never held back from a woman if she pleased him,
and of concubines had a score. My lord never sang, nor danced, nor
played; it was as much as he could do if he smiled. Would to God he
had smiled oftener; and yet if he could not laugh, he could love. Ah
me! how strait was his embrace. Was the love of that ruddy-faced,
light-minded, lying dancer a thousandth part of Saul's? If David had
loved Bathsbeba, would he have sought by the basest of deceit to force
Uriah to her after she had fallen, so that her son might be taken to be
his? And yet if Samuel had been alive, would he have cursed David as
he did my lord? I think not, for the sin and the lie with Bathsheba,
and the murder of Uriah, were not a crime like that of sparing the
Amalekite Agag. Nevertheless the Lord visited him also, and he tasted
the bitterness of revolt, for Absalom, his own son, turned against him,
and lay with his father's concubines in the sun in the sight of all
Israel, and sought his father's life. Why do I talk thus? I meant not
to talk of David, but of my lord. One word more. We never speak
without coming to that dreadful day. Your husband, Armoni, was
shamefully handed over to the Gibeonites and hung. May every messenger
of evil that does the bidding of Baal and Jehovah for ever follow the
man who consented to that deed because Saul had rooted out the
Gibeonites from the land in his zeal for the Lord. In his zeal for the
Lord! His zeal for the Israelitish Lord, and at Samuel's bidding! It
was not the desire of Saul to deal thus with the Gibeonites, for he,
the husband of a Horite, was never a fool in his wrath for his God; but
Samuel, whom he dreaded more than the Philistines, bade him. And the
plague came, and they said it was from the Lord, because of these
Gibeonites whom the Lord, through Samuel, had directed should be slain.
Ah me! I, a Horite, know not the ways of Jehovah. I sit here in
Jabesh and wait till I shall be with those whom I loved, with Saul,
Armoni, and his brother. I go down into the darkness with them, but it
will be better than the light. Maybe though dark I shall see them, and
be something of a queen--I, Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, queen of the
first king of Israel, he who has made it a nation.
MIRIAM'S SCHOOLING.
"_He wrung the water from his dress, and, plunging into the moors,
directed his course to the north-east by the assistance of the polar
star_."--THE MONASTERY.
"_That man amongst mortals who has acquiesced in Necessity is wise, and
is acquainted with divine things_."--EURIPIDES.
Giacomo Tacchi was a watchmaker in Cowfold. He lived, not in the
central square or market-place of the town, for a watchmaker's business
in Cowfold was scarcely of sufficient importance for such a position,
but two or three doors round the corner. It was in Church Street, just
before the private houses begin, a little low-roofed cottage, much
lower than its neighbours, for what reason nobody could tell--much
lower certainly; and yet there it was, a solid, indisputable, wedged-in
assertion, not to be ousted in any way. It had two small bow windows,
one belonging to a sitting-room, and the other to the shop. Across the
curve of the shop bow window a kind of counter was fixed. Here were
Giacomo's lamp, his glass-globe reflector, or light-condenser; here
were all his tools; here lay under tumblers or wine-glasses the works
of the watches on which he was operating, and here he wrought from
morning to night with a lens which slipped into its place in his eye
with such wonderful celerity and precision, that it was difficult to
believe it had not by long acquaintance with the eye become as much a
part of it as the eyelid itself. Inside the window, along the window
frames, hung perhaps twenty or thirty watches, some of which had been
cleaned or repaired, and were waiting till their owners might call,
whilst others had been acquired in different ways, by exchange or by
purchase, and were for sale. There were no absolutely brand new
watches in the collection. If a new watch was ordered as a wedding
present or a gift to a son or daughter on the twenty-first birthday, it
was specially manufactured. Immediately to the left of Giacomo was his
regulator, of which he was justly proud, for it did not vary above a
minute a month. Nevertheless its performance was checked every week by
the watch of the mail-coach guard, who brought the time from St. Paul's
as he started from St. Martin's-le-Grand, and communicated it to the
Cowfold mail-cart driver. All round the shop were clocks of numerous
patterns, but mostly of two types, one Dutch, and one with oak or
mahogany case. Perhaps a dozen or so were generally going, and it was
rather distracting to a visitor to see the pendulums of the Dutch
clocks wagging at different rates, some with excited haste, others with
solemn gravity, and no two at the same speed. Each seemed confident it
was in direct communication with Greenwich Observatory, and paid not
the slightest attention to the others. It was seldom that the footpath
in front of the watchmaker's window was empty. Generally a boy or girl
stood there with nose flattened against the panes staring at Giacomo
busied with his craft. For it was a genuine mystery to the children,
and he was a mysterious person in other ways. Under his care was the
church clock. He went up into the tower, and into a great closet in
which nobody else in Cowfold had ever been. Furthermore, as an adjunct
to the watchmaking, he repaired barometers and thermometers, and it is
certain that not a farmer within ten miles of Cowfold knew what was at
the back of the plate of his weather-glass.
How a man with such a name as Tacchi came to settle in Cowfold was
never understood. Giacomo's father and mother appeared there about the
beginning of the century: a son was born within three years after their
arrival, and is the Tacchi now before us.