on one’s back--heavy as sin, and burning as remorse--the bearer catches
at any excuse for betraying it. Nor was Jesabelle a little piqued by
the artful hint: ‘I dare say there is really no great mystery in it
after all.’ And, perhaps, the duchess, with her vast knowledge of life
and invincible _prestige_, _could_ solve the mystery, so that no harm
or loss could come of it; and driven to the wall as she was, and at
her wits’ end, for a rupture with her Grace meant social ruin, she
actually caught at the last straw--‘it will not be telling a secret,
since we are one’--as if it had been a rope thrown by a life-buoyant
philanthropist.
‘You will not say,’ remarked the duchess, somewhat sarcastically, ‘that
it is a fairy-gift.’
At that word, Jesabelle in despair and anger exclaimed--’twas as if the
very devil spoke for her and used her tongue:
‘It _is_ a fairy gift!’
The duchess uttered an appalled scream; there was a chorus of
‘Ha’s--ho’s--oh dear me’s!’ through all the gamut heard from those
around--_Tableau_!
‘What is the matter?’ cried Jesabelle terrified.
‘_Look in the glass!_’ cried the duchess, pointing to a twenty-foot
mirror opposite.
Miss Rockhard looked, and saw an awful sight. It was herself, arrayed
in nothing but her under-garments, with a wisp of straw on her wrist,
a piece of clothes-line rope about her head, and on her bosom a great
threepenny brass and glass brooch. And amid her surroundings this
costume looked ten times worse than it had done in Devonshire Street.
‘A lunatic! a mad woman! Wonder how she got in! Hope she won’t attack
us! Wonder if she’s got a pistol? We shall all be killed! Run for the
police!’ was heard on all sides. Miss Rockhard fainted. Some mysterious
friend--she knew not who--stepped forward, wrapped her in a cloak, and
conveyed her in a carriage to her home. Yet heavily as the blow fell
on her, it struck the duchess at once almost as severely. For after
all her pains, and after driving poor Jesabelle to the wall, and to
insanity, all that she had got was, ‘It is a fairy-gift,’ at which even
a child would laugh. She might well have exclaimed, ‘I have brought my
pig to a fine market, to be sure!’ as the Princess Iona Mic Flanagan
remarked, after she had driven a swine from Dublin to Cork, where it
was eaten by a wolf; the incident was sung in Tara’s Psaltery, and
recorded in the _Leabhair Ruad_, or Red-Book of the Nine Masters, in
_Shelta_.
* * * * *
When Jesabelle came to herself in the morning, a brief half-hour of
deadly, sickening despair was succeeded by a good healthy reaction of
rage at the duchess, the fairy, Flaxius, and all mankind. Even as the
hero Hans Breitmann ungratefully wished that his teacher, Professor
Schmitzerl, ‘vas in hell’ for teaching him how to ride on a bicycle,
did Miss Rockhard wish that all those whose favours, gifts, and
applause she had once so anxiously sought were all at the bottom of
Inferno, and the devil dancing on them, because they had given her in
fullest measure what she most ardently desired, yea, perjured herself
to obtain!
I have here arrived, _O lector benevole_, thou _best_ of readers, at
what is to us, I trust, the most interesting point, that is to say the
crisis in this eventful history. It happened once during the American
War that after the Confederates had been defeated in a battle, certain
gallant Southern ‘chivs’ or chivalric officers, attempted to account
for the failure: one attributing it to a sudden rise in the river, and
another to a division not coming up in time; till at last one startled
them all by asking, ‘If they didn’t think the Yankees had something to
do with it?’
Even so, after making out that everybody had been against her, and
shown themselves a pack of contemptible wretches, did it occur to Miss
Rockhard that she Herself had counted for something in the game, and
had something to Do with It. And being now, as it were, thrown into
solitude, and having a fine, vigorous mind, and being withdrawn from
the society which had so fearfully warped it; she began, so to speak,
to straighten out again morally, and recuperate. She felt no remorse
at all, but she began to study that which had made her err: a society,
with its ideals of the most adroit slander; knowledge of all that is
none of our business, ostentation, wealth, rank, and birth, though ever
so evilly sustained, or disgraced or dishonoured; the adroitness of
shallow sarcasm and silly flippancy; and the real meaning of vogue and
fashion; and finally the awkward, blundering manner in which even these
wretched fancies were carried out by nine-tenths of their devotees,
real and accomplished men and women of the world,--the true article
being a great rarity even in Belgravia.
Her self-examination was long and searching, sparing herself no pang,
being as pitiless to the Me as to the Them. Having no other on whom
to exercise her sarcasms, she turned them all on her own follies--not
raving in despair, and calling herself a fool, but, as she indeed
always did, finding out what was in the object thus illuminated and
shown up. And it did her an immense amount of good. She had an awful
crust of old dead shells, and a fearful lot of foul sea-weed to scrape
away from the ship, ere it would sail well; but she _did_ it!
For to do Jesabelle Rockhard justice, she had pluck and bottom, grit
and endurance, and was not the kind of girl to throw up the game of
life because she had lost a fairy wardrobe, or even the favour of
a duchess; and not being French, but right valiant English of good
fighting stock, she resolved to show fight, and put a good face on a
bad game.
All at once it occurred to her that the long and earnest reflection
which she had given to herself and to society had developed the serious
and sustained analysis of character which forms the real power of the
novelist, and that which elevates him above the story-teller. She was
seated at Brighton in the shingle on a fine day at noon, under an
umbrella, when it came into her mind that as a novelist she could enter
on a new life. It was like a great revelation, for with her clear,
vigorous, well-informed mind, she grasped all the possibilities of such
a career, and its tremendous power.
Once in history, when women came a-cropper in any earthly way, they
went into a convent; now they go into a publisher’s--that is to say,
they write or re-write a novel.
All geniuses are white-washed.
A woman of genius may pawn her reputation when an obscurity dare not
look over the fence.
Make yourself a celebrity, and society will do the rest.
Nine-tenths of notoriety consists not of what people know, but what
they say about anybody.
If you have sinned, there are two ways to be forgiven. Either repent
your evil deeds or describe those of others.
The most certain way to make two thousand a year by writing novels is
to tell all your friends in confidence that you earn one thousand.
Understandest thou this--or what?
A gypsy woman of her acquaintance from whom she bought bouquets, and
whose shrewd observations had often amused her, came up and gave her
what is called in tramp slang a _lyover_, in Romany a _ruzhia_, and in
English a flower.
‘Tell me, Amalthea Cooper,’ she inquired, ‘what do you understand by
society? Give me a sixpence worth of information!’
‘When any kind of a lot of people gets together anyhow,’ replied
Amalthea, after a grave pause, ‘it’s a mob. When there’s a-many that
generally assembles, such as three or four _tans_ or families, it’s
what we calls in our language the _Sweti_, or our world. But when they
are of the same kind of folk, and are invited to a drop of tea or beer,
or to have something and a talk--and one, may be, plays a tune on a
fiddle--why, that’s society.’
‘And what do they talk about?’ inquired Jesabelle.
‘Well,’ answered the gypsy with a smile, ‘mostly about how one has been
sent to _staripen_, or prison, for stealin’--and what a fool he was to
let himself be took--and how other folks has run off with one another
wives, and the like um-moralitys, and how some larrups their _romis_,
or _morts_, which is wives and missuses, and all such little _rakapen_
or gossip--and that’s what I calls society.’
‘_C’est tout comme chez nous_,’ remarked Miss Rockhard. ‘Here is your
sixpence, Amalthea. Decidedly I will take to novelling.’
* * * * *
It was a magnificent success, as great as the toilets had been, and to
Miss Jesabelle in her new mind infinitely more gratifying. She didn’t
deserve it, good people may say, but somehow Jesabelle _did_ write
brilliant books, and rose to the top of the wave. Even the incident of
the evening at the duchess’s was now narrated as an eccentricity of
genius, and when it was mentioned men in the clubs said: ‘Ah, my dear
fellow, excuse me, you haven’t got the right rendering of that story.’
Finally it settled into two versions: one of the sporting world, which
found its way into the _Blue ‘Un_, that ‘Jes’ had done it for a wager,
which was in a way true; and the other more humane legend, that it was
at the request of the duchess, who had begged her to sing the ‘Lunatic
Bar-Maid’ in character.
And her novels were stinging, I warrant you. As she became amiable
personally she grew savage in literature. She gave it to society and
fashion _à la_ aquafortis; and as society did not see itself but only
its friends in her scathing speeches, it was perfectly delighted. She
did not touch lightly and gently and pityingly, as I have done, on its
poor little imperfections; she ripped them up as with a scalper in the
hands of a Red Indian, or a familiar tormentor of the Inquisition at a
five o’clock tea. I never could learn that it did any good, for even
the victims felt pride at being shown up in good company as worthy of
note; but her books sold, and she was famous.
‘Heaven help their souls, they’d rather be’ _et cetera_.
* * * * *
It was more than a year after the events here narrated had taken place,
and Miss Rockhard had greatly improved on her celebrity by a ‘stunning
second,’ or another novel, that she found herself again at Brighton,
seated as before under a white umbrella. She was reading proofs, which
is of itself a bliss to a young writer, as strong minds as hers love
to speak of ‘_my_ publisher,’ and this was mingled with a mild, vague
impression of children digging with wooden spades, negro minstrels,
ballad-singers, flower-girls, bathing-machines, the flow of a thousand
voices, the broad-spreading, blue ocean, and ships far off and out at
sea, with the sun upon their sails.
When lifting her eyes they encountered the gaze of another pair, which
for an instant half prolonged her dreamy mood in dim conjecture, till
she recognised in the other the somewhat remarkable character who had,
indirectly, had such a wondrous influence on her fate. It was indeed
the Great and Wise Flaxius, _in propria persona_, who had taken unto
himself a pennyworth of chair at a little distance, which distance he
promptly proceeded to diminish when he perceived that the lady had not
forgotten him.
‘It is a long time since we first met,’ said Miss Rockhard. ‘Nearly two
years.’
‘Nearly two thousand years,’ replied Flaxius in a strangely solemn
voice, _wie Glocketon und Orgelklang_. ‘Yes, quite two thousand, though
learned critics of the _Kethubim_ differ as to the date, and Jochanan
and Ben Hillel think--but never mind! ’Tis so.’
‘And who was I then?’ inquired Miss Rockhard, entering, as she thought,
into the spirit of one of Flaxius’s strange jests.
‘Truly a _femme incomprise_, and one who died, in fact, misunderstood,
just as you might have done had you made your exit some two years ago,
since at that time you did not really understand yourself.’
‘I think,’ replied the dear young lady, ‘that is strictly true of the
whole silly sisterhood.’ She said it with a deep blush, though not a
blusher in a general way, for she recalled the last interview, much in
sorrow, not at all in wrath. ‘But who was I, two millennia gone by?’
‘The wife of King Ahab of the Jews, the very much distinguished
Jezebel.’
Truly this was a shake for Miss Rockhard, and the blush came up as a
flush somewhat heightened; yet she said with a smile:
‘I regret that you only remember me as the greatest iniquity of the Old
Testament. I am curious to know if you admired me very much in that
character?’
‘Not in that character, but in your true one, which, I declare
sincerely and without paradox, has been most cruelly misrepresented.’
‘As it is a personal matter,’ rejoined Miss Rockhard, ‘I need not say
that I am all expectancy and attention.’
‘Very well. Who is it that describes Jezebel for us? A personal enemy
of extreme bitterness, and one of a race approving death and murder in
any form, when any one of the _Goyim_, or Gentiles, is concerned.’
‘I never thought of that,’ said Jesabelle reflectively. ‘And religious
antipathy must have been stronger among the Hebrews than in any other
race, for they were strong-minded.’
‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it is too generally lost sight of in Church
histories that those who make the best martyrs are also best martyring
others. But to return to Jezebel. The first and chief crime with which
she is charged is remaining steadfast to that polytheistic Syrian
religion in which she was brought up, and to which she was in duty
bound to be attached, since her father was King of Zidon, and in a
sense its head. The King of the Jews married her, and was fascinated
by the charms of that splendid and sensual system which seemed so
attractive, compared to the grim, Hebrew, ascetic monotheism, which
gave no joyousness to this life, neither did it promise a future as did
the Syrian, so that it came to pass that the greatest and wisest men
among the Hebrews often adopted it, and it more than once happened that
nearly all Israel went over to it.
‘Now bear in mind, my friend,’ said Flaxius with a smile, ‘that in
reading the Book of Kings we generally go as in a torrent of headlong
agreement with the writer, who assumes, as a matter of course, that
everybody who is not a Hebrew monotheist, and an implicit believer in
all that the prophets are _said to have said_, and all that is told
about them, is utterly wicked beyond all sinners, and deserving death.’
‘That is true,’ assented Miss Rockhard.
‘The prophet whom Jezebel threatened in a rage because he had put to
death the priests of her own religion, who were probably her intimate
friends and relations, is Elijah--Elia--who with the masculine
termination appears in Greek as Helios, the sun, who, like the latter,
goes up to, or over, the heaven in a chariot of fire, after performing
the preliminary Moses-miracle of dividing the water of a stream. I
think that we may set aside Jezebel’s sins as regarded this very
mythical character as dubiously inconsiderable. And when we reflect
that the Hebrews slew one hundred thousand Syrians in one day, as we
read in the twenty-ninth verse of the twentieth chapter of Kings,
simply for differences of religious opinion, the whole war being
stimulated by prophets and priests, the slaughter of a few prophets
ascribed to Jezebel may well pass as an incident of war. These great
bands of one hundred and fifty prophets seem to have been identical
with the roaming _Darweesh_ of the Arabs, whose business it is to stir
up war. We are accustomed to feel awe at the prophets, because they
usually appear singly in their majesty, like God, but these bands of
one hundred and fifty, all prophesying _en masse_, rather detract from
the dignity of the profession.
‘Now, as regards Naboth’s vineyard, it was unquestionably a wicked
deed. Ahab had offered Naboth, the Jezreelite, a _better_ vineyard for
his own, or its worth in money, and Ahab was the king. The refusal was
a bitter blow before all the world; so bitter that the king became ill,
and seemed to be dying, because he had been, as he conceived, insulted.
‘Now there is no proof that Jezebel cared two-pence for the vineyard,
but she was passionately fond of her family and husband. She had
been born and brought up to familiarity with excess of bloodshed for
trifles; she had seen all the priests whom she revered, and _one
hundred thousand_ of her own people killed for adhering to their own
religion, and as she preferred the life of Ahab to that of Naboth, and
being an unquestionably clever and vigorous woman, she easily contrived
to have the latter put out of the way. One _evil deed_ does not excuse
another, but it is worth observing that pious King David was guilty
of a very similar, but far viler and more nefarious transaction, as
regarded Uriah’s wife, for which _he_ was indeed only vicariously
punished, while Jezebel was made to suffer not only by loss of husband
and son, but most cruelly _in person_.
‘Now we come to the end of the tragedy. Jehu, after having murdered
Jehoram in a cowardly and treacherous manner, returned to Jerusalem.
And here the narrator by a most ingenious little touch of art has
contrived to say something of Jezebel which has done more to make her
appear infamous by her biographer than every thing else accusative--if
indeed he meant it--which may be doubtful. It is the simple statement
that, “When Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she
_painted her face_ and tired her head, and looked out at a window.”
From which has come the popular saying of “painted Jezebels,”
suggesting vile women covered with rouge.’
‘And even rouge is not quite a sin; if it be, God help Belgravia!’
remarked Miss Rockhard.
‘And yet she was not even rouged,’ added Flaxius, for the Hebrew
original says, “put her eyes in painting,” which means that she drew
lines with _Kohl_ or antimony powder under her eyelashes, as was the
usual custom with _all_ women, good or bad, all over the East, where
it is common to this day. It amounted to no more than putting on a
bonnet or drawing on a pair of gloves. As for “tiring her head,”’
added Flaxius solemnly, and almost sadly, ‘when I think how Isaiah and
Jeremiah must have tired the heads and hearts of all Israel with their
lamentations, I can pass over Jezebel’s work. It was her own business.
‘And when the brutal and cowardly assassin Jehu entered, she addressed
him as only an injured wife and mother and a woman of marvellous wit
and deep feeling could have done, with the cleverest, keenest, and most
succinct sarcasm or reproach ever uttered. It was simply, “Had Zimri
peace who slew his master?” Few at the present day realise how stinging
this question was. To an extremely superstitious and brutal man like
Jehu, fearful of omens, and uneasy as to the crimes of regicide, it was
maddening. But the woman never existed who wouldn’t have said it, if
she could have thought of it.’
‘I am sure that _I_ should, under the circumstances,’ replied the young
lady, ‘though I knew that all the vengeance in the hand of man was to
follow.’
‘So she was thrown out of the window, and Jehu killed her, stamping the
bruised woman under his own feet in his frenzied rage, so that, as it
is written, “some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the
horses,” showing how high it must have jetted up, and how savagely she
was trampled on by the infuriated Jew.
‘Even the eating of Jezebel by dogs is told in such a manner as to
convey an impression of infamy and guilt on her part. But if Jehu, or
any other Jew or Gentile, or anything eatable, were thrown to the dogs
in Jerusalem to-day, they would soon finish it. When the soul is gone,
it matters little how the poor shell of humanity is treated. But I
find something very degrading and disgraceful in the manner in which
the writer dwells upon and exults in the fact that the ‘carcase’ of
Jezebel was insulted, and that dogs ate her flesh. It would have been
more creditable to Elijah, and to all concerned, if they had given her
burial as became a king’s daughter. For she was queenly, and showed no
fear in her last moment, and when she knew that death was at hand, she
calmly made her toilet, as a lady would, to appear well, like Queen
Catherine, to the last, and greeted her foe with a richly deserved
reproof, and not with prayers for mercy. Yes, she died like one of
royal race.’
‘Mr. Flaxius,’ said Miss Jesabelle, ‘do you know that if I should ever
come into court, as defendant, in anything from pitch and toss up to
murder, anarchy, or high treason, I should like to have you for my
counsel. I believe that you would make me out an angel, even to my own
conviction.’
‘The usual formula of polite society would be,’ replied Flaxius, ‘to
say that I have always been convinced myself of the fact. But as I have
not, and would be very much puzzled to know how to dispose of any such
feathered anomaly, all I can say is that if you were no more guilty
than I believe Jezebel to have been, I would accept the case with
alacrity, and clear you, if there be such a thing as justice in the
land.’
‘Since you have defended Jezebel so well,’ replied the lady, ‘perhaps
you could say a word for Herodias. I always understood that the
_Advocatus diaboli_ was the prosecuting attorney, but in this case he
appears for the defence.’
‘Herodias,’ said the sage, ‘was a bird of a very different colour,
but, like all the rest, she was a _femme incomprise_. And to begin
with, the original of the name, who is to this very day recognised
among the older witches in Italy as their queen, jointly with Diana,
was of remote Oriental origin, or the same as Lilith of the Jews. She
was eminently the fair demon of fascination who was “simply killing,”
and you must bear it in mind that something of all this devilry was in
the mind of the good Christians who wrote about the lady of the New
Testament who danced Herod off his head and the head off Saint John.
And the original Herodias was as certainly the goddess of dancing,
which was a serious and terrible means of bewitchment in the olden
time.[11]
‘In regard to the transaction described in the later Scripture, it is
marvellous that no writer has ever treated it from a modern-society,
Christian, five-o’clock-tea, practical point of view. Suppose a
lady--an intelligent, accomplished widow who has had a pleasant life
as wife of the governor of Paryobberee, or Cathay. The governor dies,
his brother succeeds to the appointment, and marries the widow, as was
strictly commanded in the Old Testament; from which book sundry moderns
derive the command that a man is not to marry his wife’s sister.’
‘Consistency, thou art a jewel!’ interpolated Miss Rockhard.
‘Well he marries the widow, or, it may be, the fraternal divorced wife.
Then uprises a clergyman of a new sect, with what were considered
eccentric new views, who has tremendous influence among the people,
and informs the governor that his marriage is illegal. And _then_,
fancy the feelings of Herodias! On one hand divorce and perhaps death
or poverty, with a charming daughter just coming out; on the other a
prophet of the wildest description. And it was considered to be such a
remarkably natural, trifling, and commonplace thing in those days to
put anybody to death who was in your way, if you had the power to do
it; just as good John Calvin did with Servetus when the latter got in
_his_ way, or as some millions of heretics were disposed of, mostly
with antecedent torture, by “meek, merciful, all-Christlike Mother
Church.” And so Herodias did what the grand majority of worldly-minded,
High or Low Church, Christian matrons and mammas would do to-day, under
the same circumstances--if they could--and put Saint John out of the
way.
‘This is the legend of Herodias.’
* * * * *
There was a long silence, when Flaxius said:
‘Now tell me, if under the same conditions of secrecy as before, and
with all your recent experience and newly acquired wisdom, would you
accept the marvellous wardrobe of the fairy Alban once more, for if you
will take it you shall have it, forthwith?’
Miss Rockhard had for months reflected on and studied this very
question to its very lees. But she took a minute--two minutes--to her
reply, and when she spoke it was with emotion close to tears, but with
firm voice:
‘Oh, I thank you from my very heart, for I feel deeply that this offer
_now_ is a thousand times kinder than was the first. But I have had
my lesson, and I hope I do not need another--when I _do_, you will, I
hope,’--here she looked up with a sad, sweet smile.
(‘She is immensely prettier than she used to be,’ thought Flaxius.)
‘You will I hope not spare me. But as for the wardrobe, it is best
where it is--in fairy hands. Nor would I know anything more of magic or
_occulta_ or mysteries, for I have learned what few know, that no human
nature, unless perhaps it be gifted as few are, and has had years of
training, can keep, or is fit to know, such secrets. It will be time to
attend to them when we shall have exhausted science.’
‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘when you exhaust science a little more, you
will indeed find that magic is beginning in earnest.’