“Verily it is so written,” was the Jew’s reply.

“But He has come, Israelite!”

“Where?” the startled Jew questioned, drawing back as if he expected his,
to him mysterious, companion to throw back his tunic and declare: “_I am
he!_”

“In the world and in my heart.”

“Ah, Sir Knight, Israel’s desolation refutes all that.”

“Jew, thine eyes are veiled. I’ll teach thee to see Him yet.”

The Jew was puzzled.

The twain fell into prolonged converse, and then in that lone place the
Crusader waxed eloquent, preaching Christ and Him crucified to one of
Abraham’s seed.

When the two captives descended to their tents, each was conscious of a
new, peculiar joy. One had the joy of having proclaimed exalted truth,
faithfully, to the almost persuading of his hearer; the other was moving
about in the growing delight and wonder of a new dawning faith.

At frequent intervals Ichabod besought the knight to take him “_to the
mountain_.”

Each visit thither was a delight to the new inquirer.

On such a journey one day spoke Ichabod: “Christian, I am consumed with
anxiety to hear thy words and another anxiety lest they do me harm. I
am thinking, thinking, by day, and, what little time my thoughts permit
sleep, I’m filled with wondrous dreams! I fear to lose my old faith, and
yet it becomes like Dead Sea apples under the light of this new way. So
new, so infatuating. None I’ve met, and I’ve met many, ever so moved
me. Why, knight, I’ve traversed half the world; sometimes as wealth’s
favorite, sometimes of necessity in misfortune; I’ve seen the faiths of
Egypt and India in their homes, and walked amid the temples of great
Rome, but with abiding contempt for all not Israelitish. Not so this
creed of the knight affects me.”

“And for good reason; I offer thee the true, new, refined and final
Judaism!”

“It seems so, and yet I tremble. I dare not doubt; that’s sin; but here’s
the puzzle that harasses me: What if, in doubting these things I’m now
told, I be doubting the very truth, the Jewish faith!”

“Ichabod, thy heart has been a buried seed awaiting the spring. It has
come.”

“Oh, knight, I’m trusting my dear soul to thee. As a dog his master, a
maid her lover, so blindly I follow thee. I can not go back: I can not
pause nor can I go onward alone. I’m in the misery of a joy too great to
be borne, almost, and yet too much my master to be given up. Oh, knight,
thou art so wise, so strong! Steady me; hold me up! I can only pray and
adjure thee to be sincere with me; only sincere; that’s all; as sincere
as if thou wert ministering to the ills of a sick man battling death.”

The child of Abraham, with a sudden movement, flung his arms with all
vehemence about Sir Charleroy. The East and the West embracing, truth
leading, love triumphant.

“Poor Ichabod, if thou hadst no soul, thy clingings and yearnings would
bind me to thee faithfully. Thou hast tried to give me charge over that
that is immortal. A Higher Being has it in loving trust; were it not so,
I’d turn in dread from thy confiding!”

“Is mine so bad a soul, master?”

“Indeed, no. Its preciousness to Him that created it, is what would make
me dread its partial custody.”

“Thou’lt help me, master, now?”

“For three objects I’ll willingly die; my mother; our lady, and the soul
of one who abandons himself, as thou, to my poor pilotage.”

“Then, thou strangely lovest me. Oh, this but more persuades me that thy
faith is right; it makes thee so good to a stranger, a slave, a hated
Jew!”

“But then we are so apart and so unlike each other!”

“No, Jew, I want to show that humanity is one. The very creed I’m trying
to teach thee and would fain have all thy race, ay, all mankind fully
understand, is full of love, joy, peace. These follow it as naturally
as the flower the stem, the humming the flying wing made to fly and be
musical.”

“Oh, my dear light, with thee I’m in joy and wilderment. Thy presence
seems to bring me hosts of crowned truths, all seeking to enter my
being. I feel like a tired runner ready to faint when thou’rt absent,
but when thou talkest the tired runner is plunged into a cooling ocean,
whose circling waves, as it were charged with the stimulus of tempered
lightnings, glowing with a million rainbows, overwhelm, lift up and rest
him. I’m floating thereon now!”

“Thy strange fancies make me wonder, Ichabod.”

“Wonder; why my strength dies from over wonder. I was ill for hours
yesterday. Light to my sweat-blinded, feverish eyes, all calm and
healing, comes when I yield to thy will; but still all my joy is
haunted by ghosts which rise in day-mare troops, pointing rebukingly to
labyrinths into which I seem to be pushed. I sometimes wonder if I’m
seeing real spirits or going mad.”

“Dost pray, Jew?”

“I dare not live without praying!”

“Then tell the All Pitiful what thou hast this day told to me. He loves
the sincere, down to the deepest hell of doubt, and from it all, at last,
will lead tumulted souls safely. An honest doubt is a real prayer, well
winged; quickly it reaches heaven, at whose portal it dies to rise again
all peace.”

CHAPTER VIII.

FROM JERICHO TO JORDAN.

      “Through sins of sense, perversities of will,
      Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill
      Thy pitying Eye is on Thy creature still.”

      “Wilt Thou not make, eternal Source and Goal,
      In thy long years life’s broken circle whole,
      And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?”—WHITTIER.

Jew and Crusader came to love each other after the manner of David and
Jonathan, and they were both made stronger and happier men on account of
this loving.

“Sir Charleroy, a year gone to day, thou and I climbed to glory.”

“Thou hast a prolific imagination or I a poor memory. I have no
remembrance of either climbing or glory of a year ago.”

“I may well remember the greatest day of my life; the day thou tookst me
up yon hill over against Jericho; I saw, as Elisha, in the presence of
his great master Elijah, the mountains, that day, full of the chariots
and angels of God.”

“But, Jew, the chariot separated Elijah and Elisha; we were, in thy
‘great day,’ made one.”

“True, but I got the prophet’s insight and power. Oh now I see Shiloh
coming in the redemption of Jew and Gentile.”

“Radiant proselyte, give God, not me the glory.”

“I’ll call thee, knight, Jordan—my Jordan.”

“The Jew rambles amid strange conceptions. Why am I like that mighty
stream?”

“Its bed and banks, God’s cup; they nobly serve, catching the pure waters
of mountain springs and heaven’s clouds, to bear them, mingled with sweet
Galilee, to the black burning lips of Sodom’s plains below. I was a dead
sea, alive alone to misery; nothing to me but my historic past, and that
sin-stained. I’m now refreshed and purified; sometime there’ll be life
growing about me!”

“The highlands of Galilee gather from heaven, oceans of sweet, pure
water, which Jordan, year after year, night and day, hurries down to the
Asphalt sea; but still that sea remains lifeless and bitter. Even so,
the clean, white truth comes to some, life-long, yet vainly. I think I’m
little like Jordan, but much like that sea.”

“And yet, knight, all is not vain that seems so. I learned this once,
long ago, in the vale of Siddim, by the sea of Lot. As I entered that
place of desolation I thought of Gehenna! The lime cliffs about, all
barren and pitiless as the walls of a furnace, shut out the breezes,
and intensified the sun’s scorching rays. A solemn stillness, unbroken
by wind, wave or voice of life, was there; suffocating, plutonic odors
ladened the air, and a fog hung over that watery winding sheet of the
cities of the plain. I watched that overhanging cloud until my heated
brain shaped it into a vast company of shades; the ghostly forms of the
overwhelmed denizens of those accursed habitations, now in mute terror
and confusion, holding to one another desperately; fearing to go to final
judgment. Once I thought they were together trying to look down into
the depths, perchance to seek for vestiges of their ancient, earthly
habitations. These fancies grew and grew upon me, mad dreamer that I was,
until I was nigh to desperate fright; but I found some little angels on
the shore who comforted.”

“Angels at Sodom?”

“Even so. The first was light and liquid silver; it sang a bar of
nature’s tireless, varied melody by my footsteps. Ah, the little, fresh
spring that burst forth through the rim of the crystalline basin, was an
angel to me. Then I found others here and there. At first I was glad,
then I began to pity them, and to wish I could change their courses. They
all wended their ways to the desolate sea, and their sweet currents were
swallowed up in the yawning gulf of death. ‘Vainly,’ I said at first.
Then I saw other angels in the forms of bending willows, and gorgeous
oleanders. Just then it all came to me; the springs, though small and
few, were not in vain. The oleanders and the willow, whose roots kissed
their fresh life, were evidences that the springs had been for good.
Aye, more, the flowers rejoiced me in those desolations more than could
the rose gardens of the Temple in days of happiness. Yea, knight, thou
hast been a rivulet to Ichabod in a day when he wandered as among arid
mountains and dead seas.”

“Blest child of Abraham, thy faith is great, though I be but a pitiable
guide; yet I’ll adopt thy similes. Be thou and I, to each other, Jordan,
rivulet and flower by turn; the fresh current gives life to plant and
blossom, while plant and blossom both shade and beautify the streams.
With both it shall be well, if we well learn to seek deep for the hidden
springs of the life that can never die. Already thou hast blessed me
very greatly, gathering truths I failed to find. Thou return’st to me
multiplied all I bestow.”

“Would I could gather for all; for my race, so blinded! Oh, it is a
tristful thought that the nearer I get to God, the further I get from
them I love next after Him. Even my mother was wont to say to me, when,
as a questioning boy, I inquired beyond the traditions of the Rabbis,
that she’d disown me to all eternity as a heretic. My belief has made me
an outcast to her, and yet the thought of her hating me tears my heart.”

“I’ll love thy orphaned heart.”

“Me? Love me; so far beneath thee and with such pauper power of payment?”

“Thy desolation makes thee rich; having none other to love, thou
canst love me the more. Thou know’st this open secret of loving; its
selfishness demands all; getting that it gives all. Fear not Ichabod, but
that thou’lt find the hunger of thy heart well fed. It is as natural for
us to love those we have helped as to hate those we have harmed. Thou
know’st how men wonder that the Infinite can love the finite, but they
forget, or never realized, that one may love because he has loved. So
is it with God. He loves, and that He loves becomes therefore rich and
worthful to Him.”

The morning after the betrothal, shall we call it, of these two men to
each other, long before dawn the knight was wakened by a cautious step
on the stone floor of his sleeping place. Sir Charleroy was at once all
alert and leaped from the couch, sword in hand, expecting to confront
some gipsy thief, for there had been a band of these wanderers hovering
near the day before.

“Who’s there?” sternly he demanded, advancing, on guard meanwhile.

“Ichabod, Ichabod!” with trembling voice and in a half whisper. It was
the Jew.

“I did not mean to fright thee,” he hurriedly explained, when he had
recovered from his fear of being thrust through, “but I’ve news; bad news
that would not wait!”

“What is the bad? Is it near?”

“Oh, knight, speak low—the news is bad enough and the ill, though not on
us, close after us!”

“Thou art excited, my friend; sit down and then unfold the matter.
Meanwhile I’ll light a faggot.”

“In truth, I can’t sit, and I’ve reason to be nervous.” Then the man
spread out his arms and his fingers as if he would stand all ready to
fly; his eyes wide open, staring as he talked.

“Our Sheik leaves Jericho to-morrow; summoned by the sheriff of Mecca.
The sheriff is supreme to Moslem. The command is for war toward the east.
Blood, blood; when will the world be done shedding blood!”

“Well, my loving alarmist,” replied Sir Charleroy, coolly, “that’s not
very bad news. If the Sheik leaves us, we’ll be free; if he takes us,
there will be a change and for that I could almost cry ‘Blessed be
Allah!’ I am sickened, crushed, dry-rotted by this hum-drum life; this
slavery; dancing abject attendance on a gluttonous master, whose sole
object seems to be eating or dallying about the marquees of his harem.”

“Oh, Sir Charleroy, the change has dreadful things for us!”

“Why?”

“I heard that the runner bringing the mandate from Mecca brings also
command that all prisoners, such as we, must be made to embrace Islamism,
enlist to die, if need be, in this so-called holy war, or be sent to the
slave mart.”

“This is a carnival for the furies! Why, Ichabod, the latter is burial
alive; the former death with a dishonored conscience!”

“Sir Charleroy, I prefer the slavery.”

“Well, I prefer neither. Is the mandate final?”

“Yes; I’ve an order to commence packing at sunrise; by noon we will be
enlisted or in chains.”

“Who gave thee these state secrets, so in detail? Perhaps ’tis only
camp-fire gossip recounted for lack of novel ghost stories.”

“Ah, ’tis too true. I’d swear my life on it!”

“Rash, credulous; but which now, comrade, I can not tell.”

“Master, I had this from one that loves me as I love thee; the young
Nourahmal, light of the harem, favorite of the Sheik.”

“Well, now it seems to me that this light of the harem is thy favorite
rather than the Sheik’s.”

“She adores me.”

“Doubtless! Where a woman unfolds her mind there she brings all else
an offering easily possessed. She seals her change of allegiance
by scattering the secrets of the dethroned to the enthroned lover.
‘Nourahmal’? Is she as charming in form as in name?”

“Hold, now! If thou lov’st me thou will’st not continue thus to wound. I
love that girl, but not the way thou meanest!”

“So? Is there an elopement pending?”

“Unworthy gibe! Say no more like it, but answer this: Is it not possible
for a man and woman to be knitted together in soul, as I and thou have
been, without the shadow of a remembrance that they are animals of
different sexes?”

“Possible? Really I do not know. It may be possible, but so very rare
that I have failed to hear of any such relationship.”

“Then thou shalt hear of it now in Nourahmal and me.”

“I’ll take both to Paris! Another wonder of the world! But explain
further.”

“My Nourahmal is a captive; hates the man to whom she must submit as we
hate him, and loves me with the new love that you have revealed to me,
because I’ve shown her that I love her that way; so different from any
thing she ever knew before.”

“Well, there are many women yoked to men for whom they feel no great
affection, yet they glorify womanhood by their unfaltering loyalty.
Loyalty is woman’s glory; the hope of society. If the women be traitors,
then, alas!”

“Nourahmal is not a wife! The man that parcels out his heart to a dozen
favorites buys but scraps in return. A woman in misery’s chains, without
the bands of the confiding, utter love of her lord, will talk; she
must talk, or go mad. I tell, thee, knight, such gossip is the panacea
of suicidal bent. There’s many a woman kills herself for lack of a
confidant!”

“Thou hast learned much philosophy going around the world, Jew, but
perhaps not this bitter truth; the woman who is traitor to one man will
be to another. Thou mayst be the next. What if she set us fleeing for the
sake of laughing at our forced return?”

“Impossible, knight; she reveres me truly; even as she does God; just as
I did Sir Charleroy when he brought me light and rest. I was to her what
thou art to me. One day I told her women had souls, as dear to heaven as
the souls of men! She laughed at me like a monkey, at first, and reminded
me that were I a true disciple of Islam I’d know that only young and
beautiful women go to heaven, and they even there have a lowly place.
Thou knowest these infidels believe that the large majority of hellions
are women.”

“Not strange Jew; they treat women as pretty or useful animals, and so
degrade, not only themselves, but these very women. A woman so demeaned
does not become heavenly, to say the least. But I think, if I were a
Turk, I’d keep only argus-eyed eunuchs to guard my harem; in faith, I’d
even have the tongues out of those guards.”

“There, now, thou dost jest again.”

“Well, go on, in seriousness. Tell us the pipings of this seraglio
beauty.”

“I’ve won her over completely.”

“This is not strange. Poets are always valiant, victorious orators with
women. The female heart is emotionally moved up to belief with little
logic, if the speaker be fair, or musical, or brave!”

“I was none of these; I told her of the ‘Friend of Publicans and
Sinners;’ that fed her soul. I do not believe there is a woman on earth
that can resist that story.”

“Oh, well, I’m not going to forget that the first woman outran her mate
in evil, nor that she exchanged the All Beautiful for the snaky demon.”

“It would be nobler for a knight, truer for all, to judge, if judge they
will, by wider circles. Do not remember the sin of one, or a few, to the
disparagement of all!”

“Eve, the best made of all, fell; then her weaker sisters are more likely
to follow in her way,” said the knight.

“She found a sin and fell: thousands of her daughters have fallen by sins
that men invented and thrust on them. Thou knowest that most women who go
wrong, go in ways they would not without the temptings of the stronger
will. The sin that ruins most is that to woman’s nature abhorrent, until
honeyed over by the tongue of man.”

“Dexterous lance, art thou, Jew; but, anyway, some women are born bad.”

“No; I’m not able for one so wise as the knight, unless I’ve the strength
of truth. I’ve heard that our wise men say that if we could trace the
ancestry of any one evil, from birth, we would find somewhere, up the
line, a father, prëeminent in wickedness. Say, women are weak to resist
evil; then, say men are strong to propagate it. Now, which way turns the
scale?”

“Oh, I say always, dogmatically, if need be, in man’s favor.”

“Let me see: Eve’s humanity that sinned was out of the finest part of
Adam’s body, and the serpent which betrayed her was a male.”

“I’ll parry the thrust by asking why the Holy Writings reveal no female
angels? I think there are none.”

“I’ve a wiser reason, knight. It is this: Man has so foully dealt with
the angels in the flesh that God’s mercy reserves their finer spiritual
counterparts for the sole companionships of heaven, which justly
appreciates these holy, pure and tender creations. Heaven would not be
perfectly beautiful without them and, methinks, can not spare one for a
moment!”

“Not even to minister to a needy world?”

“Woman’s life is here, generally, all service, all ministry; her return
to earth after death would be a work of supererogation. God sends back
the male spirits to help restore the world their sex did most to ruin.”

Then both the debaters laughed out as heartily as they dared, but there
was in the tones of the knight’s laughter a part-confession of defeat.
After a time Sir Charleroy spoke again: “Thou art calm now, after this
diversion, Ichabod; proceed with thy story of danger.”

“Well, Nourahmal——”

“Oh, yes, begin again with Nourahmal. Samson was a pretty good man for a
giant, but he had a betraying Delilah!”

“True enough; but he had also a noble mother. Remember the better, rather
than the worse.”

“I remember her peers, Mary and my mother.”

“So, then, when sweepingly condemning all the sex, please except the
mothers, at least of those who may be thy hearers.”

“Good Jew, I’ll not wound thee!”

“No pity for me; pity thyself. Such thoughts as thou hast spoken wound
thine own soul. We Jews have an order called ‘Tumbler Pharisees;’ they
affect humility, shuffle as they walk and stumble on purpose that they
may not seem to walk with confidence. Akin to them we have the ‘Bleeding
Pharisees;’ they walk with shut eyes, lest they should see a woman, and,
stumbling against many a post, are soon covered with their own blood,
receiving real harm in flying from imaginary dangers.”

“‘_Maya, Maya_,’ Ichabod,” laughing aloud, exclaimed Sir Charleroy.

The latter, catching the knight’s arm, hoarsely whispered: “Hush! Thou
mayst be heard. What dost thou mean by ‘_Maya_’?”

“Perhaps, Nourahmal! _Maya_ was the reputed wife of the supposed god
Brahm of the Hindus. It is reported that she was in form like unto fog
and her name means ‘illusion.’ A subtle truth, Jew; even a god, in love,
is near a fog bank!”

“Thou dost not know Nourahmal and dost discredit her; that’s slander;
thou dost know me and ridiculest me; that’s—but—I’ll not say it.”

“I’d not pain my Ichabod.”

“Nor discredit Nourahmal?”

“No; but did this angel, or Syren of thine, having shown the peril,
present a map to a city of refuge?”

“Ah, poor, helpless girl! she has none for herself, much less for us. She
just told me all and wept and kissed me a farewell, praying me to flee. I
could think of no question in the delight of hearing her say, she hoped
I’d meet her in Heaven, in peace away from Moslem and wars. Only think of
her faith! All new; just a little while ago she did not know there was a
heaven for women. I felt I could die then in peace. I’ve taught one woman
that she is more than a pretty animal!”

“Then, Jew, to thee, life is worth living?”

“Oh truly! Oh, if this light could only spread over Egypt and all my own
Syria!”

“Thy desire is akin to that of Mary’s son and noble. Certain it is that
we can not spread that light by fighting to sustain the fateful Crescent.”

“By the glory of God, I never will.”

“Nor I, son of Abraham; so let’s decline.”

“And go to the slave mart?”

“Oh, no, not while I’ve a sword, Ichabod.”

“Then to flee is the word?”

“The eastern campaigning with the sheik, would be a little longer route
to Paradise?”

“Perhaps not; I am assured that we are needed of God by the use He
has recently made of us. He will keep us in our flight from bloody
persecuting war, and possible apostacy.”

“I hate the last word! A knight enchanted of Mary can never become a
renegade; not I, at least. I was born October ninth. Tradition says that
the holy St. John Damascene, having had his hand cut off by the Saracens
that day, was by Our Lady miraculously made whole, and lived long after
to wield a powerful, facile pen in her behalf. I’ll trust my head and
saber hand, used for her, to her protection.”

“And I’ll trust Him that led the wandering hosts of Moses; for ‘in all
their affliction, He was afflicted with them, and the angel of His
presence saved them; and He bore them and carried them all the days of
old.’ Oh, master, I’ve comfort I can not tell, when I feel orphaned, by
thinking of my Maker, not only as a Father, but as a Mother! God is our
Mother when we, bereft of mother-love, most feel our need of it. So thou
toldst me in the mountains.”

“True; but shall we try our escape now?”

“Nay, we had better wait till a little before dawn; the camp patrol is
then withdrawn; then we’ll embrace freedom.”

“The Jew seems very confident.”

“Oh, I spent the hour after I met Nourahmal (God keep her), amid the
palms for which Jericho is fitly named, and got a token.”

“A token?”

“My eyes were touched in the darkness.”

“Sweet Nourahmal followed thee?”

“No, but He that opened the eyes of blind Bartimeus near here.”

“What didst thou see?”

“Elisha healing the streams about this palm city, type of God healing
the floods of bitterest fates; after that I saw Jericho’s walls falling
at the blasts of Joshua’s trumpets, and remembered that his God then is
ours now.”

“Didst thou see two poor men fleeing in the dark from peril to peril,
pursued by a hundred horsemen, who saber-lashed them; a little further
two corpses, one of a Christian the other of a Jew, on which fed fighting
jackals?”

“I saw no such horror! I saw two led forth from their captors, as Peter
from his dungeon; the angels that blinded the eyes of the monstrous men,
who of old sought to defile Lot’s house, blinded the eyes of the pursuers
of the two; and the angel of Peter gave them guidance and light. But
come, the night-guard has retired; between now and the call to morning
prayers is our opportunity.”

Out of the old stone stable silently knight and Jew glided, threading
their way amid splendors they believed to be, but could not see. The
ministering spirits were over and around them, their path was through the
Kelt, the sublimest waddy of Palestine; but night shrouded the latter;
their weak faith dimly discerned the other.

“Can’t thou see any way-marks, Jew?”

“I discern but few. Yet, what matter? It is enough that He who leads us
sees?”

“The night is getting blacker and blacker; the omen makes my heart shiver
as it beats.”

As the knight spoke there came a terrific crash of thunder and a
succession of blinding lightning flashes. Sir Charleroy clasped the Jew’s
arm and in startled voice questioned:

“Dost thou not fear these?”

“Why should I? The angel guides swing the torches of the unchangeable
Father to give us glimpses of our way. All is well; I saw by the
lightning flash that we are passing safely the camp lines of our captors.”

A few miles were over-past. The storm had abated a little, and the first
streaks of dawn, like spears, were rising in the east.

“Would God, good Jew,” said the now wearied Sir Charleroy, “that the
Prophet of the Moslem, who, near by here, is said once by a stamp of his
foot to have brought forth from the rock a camel, were present to dance
for us now.”

“He is not here, so we must help ourselves, knight.”

“Ah, my dear man, canst thou dance rocks into camels?”

“No, but there are houses nigh, and each thou knowst has it’s stable-yard
in front.”

“But there is the thorny nubk tree, surrounding the herds.”

“I’ve faith to try my faith when all I have is faith.”

“What for; to steal a camel?”

“Oh, no; I’d not steal a camel but I’d borrow a couple of them. Two; for
I’m not one of the knights who exhibit poverty, by riding double, thou
dost know.”

“Borrow? Well so be it; the black infidels owe us for two years’ service.
They borrowed us!”

“It’s pious to take the beasts; for we pay so honest debts of these
heathens and shorten the list of their souls’ sins by removing from them,
in our escape, the opportunity for our murder.”

“If this be sophistry, Ichabod, it is so sweet that it is taken as
delightful truth.”

“Thou art persuaded?”

“No man can out run me, be he rabbi or priest, in condemning vices, if
they be such as I do not care to practice, and I am a profound believer
in every creed that’s sweet to my desires. Here action treads the heels
of persuasion.”

On beasts, borrowed without formality, the fugitives hurried toward
Jordan, only there to find a barrier to their progress in the angry
torrent swelled by the recent storms. It was clearly futile to attempt
a passage, and to tarry, waiting the ebb of the waters, was to bring
certain detection. They turned the heads of their borrowed camels toward
their master’s homes and waited the sunrise, meanwhile moving about to
find some means of safety.

“Well, my comrade, I think it will not be long until those Turks will
give our souls an Elijah-like ascension except that there will be no
chariot. The morning shimmering on his mountain makes me think of this,
Ichabod.”

“The tracks of our returning camels in the wet earth will guide our
pursuers.”

“Suppose we climb a tree as Zacchaeus, since we can not have a chariot.
By my plume! which I’ve not seen for a year, I think that would be
safety; the Turks never look up except in prayer, and the wolf Azrael
seldom prays. But God pity us! there they are coming.”

“To the tombs, master! On the left.”

“Refuge for jackals?”

“Yes, but also for the miserable, living and dead! Now haste!”

Sir Charleroy obeyed quickly, but recoiled with a groan of disgust as
he suddenly pushed against an entombed body. He touched his hilt, as
if determined to abandon attempt at flight, and then, overcoming the
rash impulse to confront the pursuers, turned about, seized the corpse,
and dragging it from its place, hurled it over the river bank into the
torrent. He was in the dispoiled nich in an instant. A cry from the
pursuers drew him forth. “See, Ichabod, the Turks are running along the
river banks watching the mummy bobbing along in the torrent. See, it
sinks. Ah, the brutes, how they shout! They think that body alive, and
that one poor slave is hounded to death.”

“Jehovah Jeireh, now help us; they’ll soon be back,” cried Ichabod.

“Ah, I forgot; they’ll remember there were two of us.”

“Calm, Sir Knight, ‘By this sign I conquer,’ quoting thy words of
another. I’ll go forth; the only one left; at least so they’ll think.”

Sir Charleroy turned and looked at the Jew, and was amazed to see him
binding in front of himself a board having the ominous words, “Unclean”
upon it.

“What; thou, a Jew, and touch that foul thing, worn to festering death by
some leper!”

“Better night and a clean soul, though in a body burned by the cursed
leprosy, than life in Moslem slavery.”

“But what if the disease cleave to thee, and we escape?”

“Sir Knight, thou wilt live to tell others that a once hated Jew was led
of thee to truth, and after died a living death, that his benefactors
might survive. I think such deeds cause noble lights to glow in human
souls.”

“God bless and pity thee, Ichabod.”

“Ah, he does; even now. I see the scarlet line of Rahab, and it binds the
pestilence that walketh by noonday.”

The furious pursuers spurred their steeds up toward the tombs, but
as they beheld the solitary man, sitting in painful attitude with
beggar-like palm extended and wearing the dread sign, they rapidly
wheeled their steeds about and galloped away. The Moslem had heard that
a Jew would suffer any torture rather than ceremonial pollution; hence
judged that the object before them could not be the refugee they sought.

“I wonder not that the demoniac cut himself madly when among the tombs,
good Jew. Sure it’s like going to glory to get out once more. Methinks
freedom is only sweet when taken with fresh air! Well, we are out and the
enemy thwarted.”

“Methinks, master, that the leper that died here, leaving no legacy but
the sign of his death, did some good in unknowingly making me his heir.”

“And the corpse I disposed of so unceremoniously left me a house of
safety, though small and musty. I’ve a bitter thought.”

“So, Sir Charleroy, tell it me, perhaps I can sweeten it.”

“I, the heir for a little time of that soulless clay, am like it.”

“Not much being here and alive.”

“I rather think like it. See me tossed about by strangers, robbed of my
rights, helpless to resist fate’s tides, begrudged the room I occupy, and
not one who once knew me to weep over my besetments.”

“Sir Knight, the miracles of our frequent preservation should make our
murmurings dumb.”

In the evening Jordan ebbed a little and the two wanderers passed over.
Nor did they regret the consequent immersing in its flood. No word was
spoken as they passed through the current, for, before they entered,
having remembered that at this Bethabara ford man’s Savior was baptized,
they were each busy with his own meditations. When they stood on the
other shore, Sir Charleroy reverently said: “Comrade, I prayed as we
passed that we might have the dove of peace henceforth above our souls at
least.”

“I prayed on my part that God would accept the act as the Christian’s
typical burial to the world and separation from its sins.”

“How like death and birth is that beautiful type. They level all life.”

“Are our lives leveled? knight.”

“Henceforth; and we are brethren.”

“And our King and Savior was baptized here by the herald of His Kingdom,
John?”

“Yea; here the new Judaism was formally inaugurated. Tradition says also
that Jesus baptized his mother afterward at this ford.”

“How filial; how beautiful; how expressive! He was her God, yet her
son, she his mother and disciple; and each by all ties and forms bound
together in a fellowship of helpfulness.”

“The Jew’s an interpreter.”

“Sir Charleroy sweetens my trust as Jordan sweetens the bitter waters of
Bahr Lut.”

CHAPTER IX.

THE FEAST OF THE ROSE.

      “They arise now like the stars before me
      Through the long, long night of years;
      Some are bright with heavenly radiance,
      And others shine out through our tears.
      They arise, too, like mystical flowers,
      All different and all the same—
      As they lie on my heart like a garland
      That is wreathed around MARY’S name,”

“Good morning and a blessing, comrade.” It was the greeting of the Jew
to the knight who lay asleep under a palm the day after the flight. The
sleeper slowly rising, murmured:

“I’m half vexed at thee, Ichabod; thou hast dissolved a dream filled with
sights of home and mother.”

“I’ve brought lentils, barley, and grape-clusters; they are better than
dreams when the sun is up.”

“To those sad when awake, joyful dreams are welcome.”

“There are real joys just before us.”

“Real joys, just before us? Grim sarcasm; a sorry jest, Jew!”

“No; oh, no. I’m telling thee the smiling, clean-faced truth. We’ll be
safe at Jabbock’s city by sun set!”

“Safe? safe? I’m unused to that word; almost afraid of it. What does it
mean in this country?”

“Oh, these cavalrymen! always on the charge; now here, now there. Thy
thoughts go by habit, sometimes racing forward, sometimes retreating. A
while ago thou wert as full of faith as Gideon, now thou art as timorous
as Canaan’s spies.”

“My habits have grown fat by feeding on piebald experiences.”

“Experience is a lying prophet, when it counts without reckoning God.”

“I can not see a step ahead. That’s certainty to me, though thou callest
it doubt. I know not how to hang rainbows upon the ghostly brows of the
future when I’ve no power to lay hand on the ghostly form and have no
rainbows.”

“He that lifted the burdens of the past from off us holds the changing
winds of the future in His fists. One second of life goes ever with
only one second of care. I learned this of Sir Charleroy long ago. Now
he forgets his own teachings. Shall I call him Reuben, never excelling
because unstable as water?”

“Call me slave: Uncertainty’s slave! Thou didst waken me from a dream of
home, to the shock of remembering again that I was homeless, dead to all
that once made life worth living. The gorgeous hopes of thy fertile mind
are mocked by stern present facts.”

“Odd talk from one just dreaming of his mother; a good woman didst say?
then very hopeful; all good women are. Then remember how thou didst lift
me to the very gates of heaven yesterday. Thou canst not see a step
ahead? Well, then look back; miles; years. Was not our God in thy battles
in the thickets; in the mountains; in Jordan? My poor reasoning tells
me that He has wrought too much for us to drop us now. He must get His
reward in keeping us to the end.”

“Some of the past makes me shudder, Ichabod.”

“Pick out the best, not the worst. We escaped the very Gehenna at
Jericho, following murderers, the storm, slavery; now free, fed, rested,
the eastern air washed and sunned to a tonic. I’m drinking lotus balm out
of it.”

“There it is; the sun’s in thy brain, poet-preacher.”

“No, I’m only giving thee back some of thine own sermons. I draw from my
own heart no monster memories. If I’ve fought hard battles it sufficeth
that I have fought them once. I’ll not recall their bloody sweat and
tears for the sake of refighting them. No, I’m going back to the sweet,
happy hours of babyhood; for I tell thee, knight, there is a world of joy
to a man, scorched by stern experience, to forget himself sometimes back
to the lullabys and warblings of the days of his innocence.”

“I can’t do it.”

“I can’t help doing it, especially in this place! My whole being feeds on
a present scent of home.”

“Thou knowest the country hereabouts?”

“My soul laughs in friendly converse with these crocuses, pinks, and
asphodels, turning the velvet, grassy plains to palace carpets. I’m
saying to myself these blossoms must know me, their bowing heads and
offered odors being my reward for nursing their mothers when I was a boy.”

“Well, flowers are sincere friends; they never change and are all
charitable. That’s why they are deemed fit presents to those in prison,
or proper offering to be laid on the breast of the dead Magdalene.”

“Ah, dead Magdalene; for even the symbol of a broken promise; born to
be a queen of love, by perverted love dethroned! Woman, man’s ward, by
man betrayed; the guide star setting in black night; the savior of human
purity befouling all purity! Given the power by which Eve was to crush
the serpent’s head and using it to breed all serpentine ills. This is
Eve turning a volcano upon Eden. Put flowers upon her once passionate,
now dead, heart, in awful contrast! Nature at her worst is intensified
anguish; at her best an ocean of joy, an universe of light and song. So I
learn of nature under man. Listen to nature’s perfumed throb now: these
thousands of feathered songsters, millions of lesser creatures, whose
melody is larger than themselves and more perceptible. Hear the humming,
thrumming, buzzing, trumpetings. Oh, this is life as the All-Saving tuned
it to utter joy! It widens, deepens, thickens; getting sweeter, louder,
happier all the way. A tempest, set to music, knight. I’m caught in its
whirl and join in its praisings. It comes over me as an insight of what
nature really is. God cares for it all and made it thus, to throb and
exult!” Ichabod paused in transport. “But I sometimes think there’s a
great waste of these things; there is so much in places where there is no
human ear or eye to hear or see.”

“Reuben is narrow-viewed just now. Man is not all! God makes happiness
because He is so full of goodness He must. Our rabbis call Him ‘The
Fountain.’ There is no waste! He makes these things for His own joy, and,
methinks, looks down from the circle of the heavens to say to what is in
the desert or wilderness, ‘Very good.’ Then, beyond this, I’ve sometimes
thought He kept the processions of joy and beauty moving along; coming,
going, dying, living, ending and beginning again, as a sort of practice;
by action keeping all fresh and new. He causes things of beauty and power
to pass through His divine alchemy from one glory to another, as the
general causes his squadrons to move through the evolutions of the battle
before the conflict. The Father is awaiting man’s hour, man’s return
from sinning; the time for millennial advent; then all delights, as if
fresh born, all goods newly harvested, will appear to be multiplied,
intensified, transfigured. That will be the beginning of hereafter.”

“Oh, Israel, the sun is in thy brain. I forget all logic of contention,
charmed out of words, by feasting on thy orisons, Go on, Jew.”

“Then I’ll say ’twas God, not chance, nor fate, that brought us to wander
alone with nature. Read well nature’s book that lies open in the lap of
the Great Teacher! Only stand close to Him and He will hold the torch,
turn the pages and give the sure interpretations of the sweetness that
feeds quiet, the picturesqueness which evokes smiles and the stately
grandeurs which beget faith.”

“Israel, thou climbest the sun-ladder to rhapsody!”

“Whether soaring, climbing, or creeping, I know not; but this I know,
I’m tasting in these wanderings God’s kisses. They are in the flowers; my
spirit rests on His as my body on the balm of the fresh breezes. Then,
animate nature seems so contented and happy! Why, I’ve been ravished
by the songsters; as I’ve said to myself, they echo the angelic anthem
of heaven, peace. Had any such doubt as haunts thee, come to me, since
passing Jordan, it would have been sung out of countenance by the winged
warblers or dragged from my heart captive in floral fetters by Him that
hath two staves, beauty and bands.”

“Oh, Ichabod, do not pause. Go on, I pray thee.”

“Then thou art glad to hear that nature is not a beautiful widow mourning
her dead bridegroom through the ages?”

“I love to listen to thee.”

“Listen to a wiser. See those stately heliotropes. They stand above all
of their kind with shining faces; great in aspiration, great in devotion.
All day they turn toward the sun and when their blossoms fade they leave
a hardy seed. The winter may bury it, but it springs forth in vernal
days, strong in the life it won by loving the summer sun.”

“Ichabod, I’m charmed! Let’s abide here always amid these joys of nature.”

“What, be hermits?”

“Yes; life’s troubles are made by its people; the fewer people the fewer
troubles.”

“While sharing their troubles may we not lessen them. No man may live to
himself; we’re wedded to each other.”

“Yes, wedded to life. A royal phrase; since I’ve been constantly either
hating or loving it; fearing to live and then fearing to die. Wedded! ah,
ha, ha; the wedded are those who most madly love and then most bitterly
hate.”

“Say sometimes; then thou’lt be like the stopped horologue, telling the
true time once in twenty-four hours, at least.”

“Thy poetry runs into caustic quality. What hast thou been lunching on
since morn?”

“At least not on Dead Sea apples, fair without, ashes within. My poetry,
if I have any, always sings in accord with the company it keeps.”

“How many more arrows in thy quiver, hast thou?”

“Only one, and that a question; does my master intend to foreswear
marriage himself? He ridicules it.”

“I have already done so.”

“Well, ’tis well thou didst not live in Rome, for its citizens that dared
to live amid the temptations and soul-crampings of voluntary bachelorhood
were highly taxed for their disregard of the claims of society and the
state.”

“Yet even the Romans ever deemed bachelorhood a blessing. In this opinion
royal Claudius decreed that the sailors who brought to Rome a ship loaded
from the wheat granaries of Egypt in the time of Agabus’s famine, should
be as a reward permitted to remain unmarried. If I were a Roman and a
sailor I’d pray for a famine and a Claudius.”

“A world without wives? What a world!”

So saying Ichabod caught up a stick and began marking on the earth.

“How now, Israel; some sorcery?”

“No—yet, may be, yes. I’ll picture a world without women.”

The Jew outlined the Egyptian deity, “_Kneph._”

“What have we, man or beast?”

“Truly, I think partly both. The knight has described his Elysium and I
have here pictured a fit king for it. Behold thy god, sworn celibate.
Egypt’s adored Kneph. Is this hideous enough?”

“A god! well he’s not handsome; a ram’s head; four horns; two up, two
down; armed as both ram and goat?”

“Both were sacred to him in Egypt; also the horned snake with which
Cleopatra put out her life; poor, unfortunate man-wrecked beauty.”

“But, Jew, thou dost dawdle! What of this play?”

“Oh, nothing, only Kneph would do well for a sailor, at Rome, under
Claudius, in famine time!”

“My poet wanders, but yet stings.”

“So? Kneph was a god that boasted, or rather his spokesmen did, that he
was the _father of his mother_. What economy! No need to be grateful to
or love a mother; no need to wear a wife on the heart. The folly of a
dark age by folly darkened in the mad attempt to lift up man without his
purer better part.”

“How strange, Jew, whenever we touch a new belief, or an old one, new
to us, we find peoples following an idea or ideal. There has been a
crying through the world ever for a some one for pilgrim man to follow.
How passing strange; our century wails the self-same cry; and somehow
it always happens that this matter has something to do with woman. See;
‘_Kneph_’ was the monstrous birth of those who thought man superlative,
and greatness to be by being all man. How sharply the devotion to the
Madonna cuts across this! She was mother of the noblest, and man in the
begetting left out. Oh, my head’s full of thoughts, but they tumble along
toward my lips without system or leader. I talk like a madman, though I
think like a Seraph.”

“I think, Sir Charleroy, that a healthy son of Adam sneering at all
women, publicly, reproaches himself as being one who never knew a true
one.”

“More javelins! I’d swear, anyhow, that if I’d been Adam, no winged
serpent of gaudy colors and honey tongue could have lured me from
Paradise, Eve or no Eve!”

“If thou hadst been there thou wouldst have been lonesome with the
speechless herds; finding the new woman, would have loved her like the
boy who mates just to see how it seems.”

“Oh, likely!”

“Then if thy ward or angel attempted to elope with the devil thou wouldst
have gone along, too, from curiosity, as lad to a hippodrome, just to see
the finish; or as thousands of men since Adam, tied to wayward women,
have gone down with them to darkness, preferring hell with their idols to
heaven without.”

“I suppose so. Oh, how strangely are the fates of men and women
interwoven.”

“Then thou dost not now elect to live a hermit, without the companionship
of the frail, fair and faithful sex which are said to double our joys?”

“Yes and multiply our sorrows!”

“I suspect thou’lt change thy late creed very soon.”

“Why so?”

“I expect ere long that we’ll meet some living blossoms.”

“By my token, that’s good news, Ichabod.”

“So, then, thou art ready to recant?”

Evening came, and the pilgrims supped on the meager meat they were able
to procure in the fields.

“Now poet of the Palm Land mellow my dreams by possessing me of thy
meditations. What fixes thy gaze?”

“The monarch of the sky; after a day such as this has been, he seems to
me to take his departure with a peculiar sort of triumphal sweep of his
trailing splendors.”

“Horus exulting over prostrate Set.”

“But night, not the green-colored son of Osiris, conquers now, master.”

“Night never conquers. It merely lives by sufferance; often routed by
the invincible spears of the sun. Darkness creeps forth here because the
golden charger in masterful strategy has gone elsewhere to rout other
armies of the dark kingdom. Lay this to thy heart, good Jew.”

“I do, as precious ointment to a blister. Enlarge me.”

“There, Jew; see the fleecy clouds over Jordan. How grand!”

“Yea, as I’ve often seen them; some like alabaster thrones, and others
like ships on fire, while others are like silver castles, banded with
cornelian and gold, with here and there hyacinthian shields hung on their
battlements, all fresh as the stones in heaven’s foundation walls! How
they career and float along the empurpled ocean of the west! I forget
myself even now into their midst. Oh, knight, such pictures, such visions
make my soul shout in peals of holy laughter.”

“My Israel, the sun which woos the earth into making love to him with
flowers never sets in thy brain; thou livest in the poet’s constant noon.”

“But we both are changing. Even the knight gets mellow. Hardship, the sun
and faith are working in us both for good.”

“Getting to be? No; thou wert and art poet, painter and singer; all in
one. If the world does not hear thee the Seraphim will, by and by.”

“I’ve noticed that souls unbent from some long, twisting pain, run,
aspire and play. It is mercy’s rest, reward.”

“God fits some especially to catch passing joys, Ichabod.”

“Yea, and it all comes from a serene faith that all is very good as He
made it. I’m just opening to the Sun Eternal, at whose right hand are
pleasures evermore. I love thy wakening touch, my guide.”

“Ah, I’m a bungling player on the harp of thy soul, but I love thy
melody. Child of nature, speak more and more to me.”

“I can but ill tell all. I’m dumb amid the waves of peace which enhalo,
the hopes that thrill, the views of truth that fill my being.”

“I believe thee on my soul, Jew. I’d stop now to remember a little,
perhaps to sleep, since so I can follow dreams that would craze me to
contemplate awake; but if we now sleep, pray God our day-dreams go on and
on. I think we are pilgrims following spiritual truths. They’ll lead us
on high; let’s not miss their direction.”

“One may sleep, master, when he can not think; for me, now, I’d rather
court, awake, my mind’s guests, for a time, meanwhile gainsaying the
lullabys of cricket and nightingale now floating out from every bush.”

“So be it. How shall we proceed to pass the time?”

“Can we set up an Ebenezer? God hitherto hath helped us.”

“I have it; we’ll to the feast.”

“Well, we have what some great kings have not, and so shall find joy in a
feast. We have appetite!”

“Thou dost miss my meaning, though thy point is prime. We seldom think
to thank the Giver for the power to enjoy as well as for the enjoyable.
I knew a French prince, once, who said he’d give his birthright for one
good dinner, and he was no Esau, either. He had dinners and dinners, but
what were they along with premature decay gnawing at his vitals like a
rat, while he himself could eat less than a babe?”

“I see; the knight would have us thankfully commemorate to-day’s
enjoyment of nature.”

“Just so; I think, in loving nature, because we begin to understand
her, we will be on our way to all the natural joy of which she is God’s
interpreter.”

“But our feast?”

“The stars are out on the blue; their queen will soon come up from the
sea, then I’ll induct thee into the feast of the ‘Rose.’ The rose is the
queen of flowers, and flowers the thoughts of God!”

“The feast of the Rose! I’ve heard it was a licencious, heathen orgy!”

“It was then a shameful misnomer. My Mary found it; transformed it. Out
of it, through reverence of her, comes a beautiful observance. See here,
Jew.”

So saying, the knight took from his bosom a string of precious stones
and arranged them, as they glowed under the moonlight, on the ground
heart-shaped.

The knight then questioningly observed the Jew.

The latter shook his head and remarked:

“I’ve seen such often among the Arabs. They have a prayer for each bead
to be said the night after the death of one of their number, believing
the shade departs not to Hades ’till the prayers are said. Thou dost not
practice their enchantments?”

“Bah! Never. My gemmed circle has a deeper, holier significance. Each
pendant is to recall to mind some virtue or event in the saintly Mary’s
life. Then there are guilds called, ‘Brothers of the Rosary.’ I belong
to one such; each member is sworn to pray for all the others wherever
scattered. The Turks may have had a praying string, but the Crusaders
have appropriated and applied it to nobler uses.”

“Tell me more of it, if there be more.”

“There are but fifteen in my brotherhood.”

“Only fifteen, no room for me?” said the Jew.

“Fifteen; to suggest the fifteen great events in Mary’s life; namely, the
_Annunciation_; Gabriel announced to Mary that she was to be the Mother
of Jesus; the _Visitation_; Mary in the Gospel spirit went quickly to
tell her kinswoman of her promised favor; the _Birth of Jesus_, this was
the crowning joy; then here is the gem that recalls the _Presentation of
Jesus_ in the Temple. Thou knowest, Jew, thy fathers often wondered how,
after all, a lamb, an animal, could stand between offended Deity and man.
Jesus in the Temple was the fulfillment or explanation of the mystery!”

“Yea, truly, I’ve seen this. Oh, that all my people could also see it!”

“Then, here is the jewel that reminds us of the ‘_Scourging at the
pillar_’ of Him ‘by whose stripes we are healed.’”

“Israel reads Isaiah with darkened mind, my loving guide. I’ve seen this.
Oh, that my people could.”

“Here is the jewel that recalls the ‘_Crowning with thorns_’ of Him that
hath to give, at His right hand, ‘pleasures forever more.’ He wore that
thorny coronet that His redeemed should return with singing, crowned with
everlasting joy.”

“I’ve felt it; feel it now. Hallelujah!”

“This one is to commemorate ‘_Jesus bearing the Cross_;’ this one ‘_His
crucifixion_,’ and this ‘_His resurrection_.’”

“The hope of hopes by our Saducees denied!”

“Then we have here another to remind us of our Saviour’s ‘_Ascension_,’
with His pregnant promise of a royal return to take at last His children
home.”

“Come, Lord Jesus, even so, quickly!” cried Ichabod.

“‘Wait patiently for Him and He will give thee the desire of thy heart,’
oh, heir of faithful Abraham!”

“I weary sometimes, my loved teacher.”

“So do we, of our brotherhood; but here is a thought of rest; this bead
recalls ‘_Pentecost_.’ We are led of the Spirit, which guides to all
truth and comforts by the way.”

“But what has all this to do with Mary?”

“Oh, here are two beads; one reminds us of her ‘_Assumption_’ into
heaven, the other of her ‘_Crowning_.’”

“Was she crowned?”

“Yea, in heaven, for the Son of Mary promised to His faithful ones this
exaltation; ‘_I appoint unto you a Kingdom as my Father hath appointed
unto me_, ye which have continued with me in my temptation.’ Surely, she
that followed him from the pains of parturition, as an outcast, to the
Cross and the sepulcher, CONTINUED!”

“I would I could have been there to enter the race for such crowning.”

“‘He hath made us kings and priests unto God; if we suffer we shall also
reign with Him,’ Jew.”

“Hallelujah! would I could shout it to heaven; no, I do; but rather to
all Jewry!” exclaimed the Israelite.

“John was only a ‘voice crying in the wilderness,’ as he thought, but he
was heard at the palace and down the ages. Even now I voice his words in
this lone place.”

“Thou didst not tell me of the meaning of that black and red pendant,”
said Ichabod, interrupting.

“Oh, _Gethsemane_, Jesus, the intercessor for the world, ‘who ever lives
to intercede.’ The black sign is of that.”

“Then I’ve a Saviour in glory praying for me. Oh, this is balm and water
to me! Why do I dare to think of myself as a poor Jew! God pity; no,
forgive me! I, repining sometimes and yet defended in glory; honored by
royal adoption, elected of God, called to kingship!”

“How we do go up and down; sometimes thou, sometimes I. Now I’m leading,
awhile ago ’twas thou. Yea, we are all dependants; but this is healthful
meditation, Ichabod, and thy confession rebukes me as well.”

“Is this all of the feast?”

“Oh, no. Here are some tokens to remind us of Mary’s life; so brief, so
useful. See, here, five gems that remind us of the wounds of her son;
her wounds as well, for the sword that pierced Him pierced through to
her soul also. At each of these emblems we ‘Rosary Brothers’ repeat
the Lord’s Prayer. Last of all, reverently clasping this crucifix,
we sacredly repeat the Apostle’s Creed, the same as I taught thee at
Jericho.”

“I remember, as I do the water courses, when thirsty.”

“What think’st thou of all this formality? Is it like the Arabic
mummeries?”

“No, they are mocking devils, are they not?”

“I am not to judge of their sincerity, nor their needs, nor art thou.”

“Master, I wish I could be a Rosary Brother. Methinks it would help my
ambling faith sometimes, if I could touch a token.”

“He above is all tender of baby faiths that can do no better than amble.
Remember the words of thy own Hosea: ‘I drew them with cords of a man,
with bonds of love, I taught Ephriam to go; taking them by the arms; just
as a mother teaches her babe to walk,’ is it not?”

“Even so. Does the Rosary help some to walk?”

“I believe it does.”

“Tell me more about it.”

“The Crusaders were the first to call Mary ‘The Rose.’ To almost all
mankind that flower has ever been the emblem of pure, unselfish love,
and when the soldiers of the Cross grew to understand the character of
her that gave the world its Saviour, they could think of no title more
fitting for that queenly woman.”

“I’ve an Egyptian rosary, knight. See, I wear it on this golden chain,
next my heart, for its safety——”

“To ward off witchcraft?”

“Bah! ’Tis a toy in usefulness. I keep it, thinking it may work
incantation with the money-lender, and so save me sometime from
starvation.” Then the Jew laughed aloud at his own wit. It seemed very
ridiculous to him to liken his talisman to the real rosary or its saint.

“Wouldst thou let me examine it, Jew?”

The latter handed to the knight a chain and image.

“Egyptian?”

“An image of Neb-ta, sister of Isis, the wife of the Sun God Osiris. It
was given me by a Copt priest, whom I saved from drowning in the Nile.”

“A Copt?”

“A Copt. He was a professed Christian; but, like some of the ancestral
Egyptians, sought to be right by being a little of every thing. He was
very superstitious, though he thought himself very broad-minded. He was
quite certain that Coptic Christianity was true, though not equally
certain that his pagan ancestors were in faith all false. He thought he’d
be on the safe side by mixing a little of all creeds with his own, and so
he prayed in Christ’s name and also Neb-ta’s.”

“A pretty fool, Jew.”

“Yea. He had a story about the goddess, very pretty when not absurd,
running somehow thus: When Osiris was cut to pieces by Set, a type of day
slain by night, I think, Neb-ta went round the world with her widowed
sister, Isis, to gather up the fragments of her spouse. Isis is the
moon above; below, reproduction. She is pictured in Egypt, as all the
female deities, with two eggs and a half-circle at the side, to express
the latter idea. Isis has in her hand also this sign—a cross supporting
an egg, to typify immortality. The old Egyptian priest told me this
sympathetic Neb-ta, if I trusted her, would reward me for saving his
life, by defending my case in Hades. There is a good deal of mysticism in
all this, but I rather prize the gift, since it reminds me that I once
saved a man.”

“But, Nourahmal? Since thou knew of Mary thou hast saved a woman, Jew.”

The Jew was silent. The knight continued:

“These philosophic, inseeing, sign-writing, symbol-making Egyptians were
pilgrims, too; a nation of graal-seekers; after an idea, example. I see
always the huge Sphinx coming before me when I think of them.”

“The Sphinx! Well, that’s strange. I’d never think of that, unless I
happened upon something very big and very meaningless!”

“No, no; the people that rocked the cradle of religions in their infancy,
wrought all their theology into that one mighty symbol, to endure and
challenge compare with all that man should find beside.”

“I do not see how!”

“The Sphinx faces the East—light!”

“True!”

“It can not reach that light toward which it looks, neither could the
Nubians.”

“All true.”

“It was part man, part beast; but the upper part was man, and this is
what we think we know, and all of man?”

“Oh, knight, Phthah, the ‘beautiful-faced,’ ‘secret-opener’ of the Nile
gods has touched thee.”

“The Sphinx was like man’s thought; too great for words; at least such
words as men can now fit to their lips.”

“I see; it’s all coming into my mind, master.”

“It sat still and was silent, but the world went on; the thought it
expressed reached hearts after the men that formed the image had passed
away. The truth lives ever, and can not die until it completes its
purpose.”

“Thou art a magician, who pleases, astonishes, excites, instructs, and at
the same time plays with me as if I were a pigmy!”

“It’s not I, but the truth. The Sphinx again! Its hugeness, truth
expressed, appears mighty when placed by our sides.”

“Tell me where I am! Shall I fling Neb-ta away as a bauble, or beg its
pardon for hanging so much meaning to a fool’s neck?”

“Vehement! The sun is in thy head!”

“But shall I sit and look as a Sphinx, or run mad because I can’t?”

“Be calm, and let me tell thee that the dwellers by the mighty Nile
plagued themselves with lasting darkness when they banished the people
whose leader’s face shone from communion with Jehovah. They clung to
some half truths, left them by the progeny of Joseph, but the half was
dimmed by courted lusts.”

“But my people had no Neb-ta, no women divinities to leave in Egypt.”

“No, yet Egypt, aiming to exalt the tender, the beautiful, the mother,
incarnated certain virtues, and lo, a woman deity! It was an effort to
find the ‘Rose.’ The nation was in a vast, serious pilgrimage through all
their dynasties after an idea, a pattern; an opportunity to reach and
to express the best things. I tell thee, Jew, the heathen nations sit
in darkness; this side and that, along the track of time, holding here
and there a torch, waiting through the night whose hours are tolled off
at century intervals, for something, Some One. There have passed before
them like phantoms, gods and gods; man invented, man evolved; but none of
these tarried, none satisfied. Oh, ‘the Isles wait for thee,’ Jesus, Thou
Ideal Man, and also for the true conception of Mary the ideal woman!”

“For two Gods? Is Mary divine?”

“Did I say that? Nay, as the child Jesus was subject to her, so she was
subject to the Christ, at last. Christ was the Word, Mary His blessed
echo; Christ the Sun, Mary the Moon that reflected that light, showing
its beauty in woman’s life!”

“But now, what shall I do with my beautiful fright, Neb-ta, Sir
Charleroy?”

“Put her away, in mind, amid the galaxies of woman deities; mythical
in all but the pitiful sincerity of the adoration of their devotees
and in the greatness of the truths they vaguely articulated. See, I’ll
interpret: Isis going round the world to gather up the fragments of
her dismembered husband. Woman’s ministry; the restoration of man;
wife consecration to an only love. Then there was not only beautiful
widowhood, second only to beautiful wifehood, but also the spinster
sister. Hail Egypt! Thy Sphinx saw further than our peoples of boasted
civilizations. At our best we never rose so near to a just altitude as to
attempt the deification of the maiden sister, the omnipresent angel, who
mothers other people’s children as if they were her own. Egypt worshipped
motherhood, perhaps grossly, in adoring the earth’s fructifications, but
she did not overlook those pious souls who in a glorious self-abnegation
play waiting-maids to the real queens of earth, the child-bearers. I’d
never tire praising the child-bearers, or all who love them, for they
that bring forth a life are greater than the greatest kingly man-slayer
on earth. The world is upside down; no religion is wholly false that aids
to right it in any degree. Hail, creeds of Egypt, or any other land,
that seek to efface from fame’s pages the names of life-destroyers that
thereon may chiefly shine the names of those who give or save life.”

“Oh, oscillating Sir Charleroy, thou art just and courtly now.”

“Praise me, then! Mankind would average better by far than it does if all
were right half the time.”

“Would I could gather all the threads of to-day’s blessed communings into
a golden band to support over my heart faith’s breastplate.”

“I can give thee its summary: God, a beauty Creator, out of all things
hideous in His good Providence will emerge the fine, tender and loving.
Neb-ta, Egypt’s ideal, carried the lotus, the flower of unrestrained
pleasure, as her scepter; Neb-ta-like the influences that sway most human
hearts to-day; but the Rose of the world has blossomed. Mary, the flower
of women. They that love and serve, as that warm, red-hearted woman,
shall at last reign in eternal bliss within the ruby walls of the New
Jerusalem.”

“I’m with the knight, to proclaim thy Rose!”

“A good profession! It will be well if we remember that woman is as
essential to religion as religion to women. As for man he needs the one
as the interpreter of the other. Therefore, it was that God sent to earth
a flower that could talk.”

CHAPTER X.

AFTER EVE, ESTHER OR MARY?

      “Still slowly passed the melancholy day,
      And still the stranger wist not where to stray:
      The world was sad—the Garden was a wild;
      And man, the hermit, sighed—till woman smiled.”—MILTON.

The Israelites, along Jabbock, were all aglow with preparation for
celebrating one of their feasts. Sir Charleroy and his comrade journeying
along, in the early morning, were apprised of the advent of the
festivities by the passing near them of a company of maidens, marching
and chanting. The pilgrims drew apart and sequestered themselves behind a
clump of nubt trees that they might observe, themselves unobserved, the
graceful procession of singers.

“Well, my poet, didst thou conjure up these fairies, or have we come on
the musk-born houri?” Sir Charleroy spoke in an absent-minded manner,
perhaps, with an affectation of a lack of very much interest. In fact,
long privation of the presence of women had somehow rusted from his
bearing, in their vicinage, most of the confident courtier. In a word,
he was now bashful in their presence. He spoke with a small witticism to
subdue, his own embarrassment. His words were unheard, for the Jew was
all engaged in contemplating the passing women.

In truth, the latter made a striking picture; garbed as they were, in
holiday attire; all young, oriental in beauty, and fresh in face, form
and action. They were rural maidens and that says all. It had been a
long time since either Ichabod or Sir Charleroy had met such types of
womanhood; all free from affectation; all natural and graceful in motion;
a band of women, as sisters, bent to one purpose and that a lofty one,
the proper observance of a joyous, pious, religious ceremonial.

Presently Ichabod drew a long breath and rapturously exclaimed: “Praise
be to the Patriarchs, my people!”

“I’d rather say, Ichabod, praise the Patriarch’s daughters, if these be
human!”

“Ha, ha! flesh, indeed! Our Hebrew maidens celebrating the Feast of
Esther!”

“Are they praying God for Adams, so that each Esther and Vashti may have
one all to herself? If so, we are part answers to their prayers.”

“Hush such jest! These be holy maidens, now honoring our Esther. Thou
knowest about her?”

“Certainly; she was my heroine before Our Lady dethroned in my heart
all others. I was wont to wish I’d been about in Haman’s time. I’d have
aroused that old dotard, Ahasuerus, right quickly. By the sackcloth of
Mordecai, if I’d been the king, the hanging would have put the Haman
family into mourning long before it did.”

“Oh, how like angels! It’s years since I saw a woman other than as
deflowered by harem life. Heavens, what a spoiler man is at his worst!”

“Dost forget Nourahmal? But no matter; I admire, and wonder that some
roving band of Arabs, with less piety, or more force than we, does not
swoop down upon these innocents for seraglio prizes. Perhaps these have
the liveried angels about, that are said ever to guard saintly purity.”

“Doubtless; and besides them, with all the practical providence which
belongs to the Jew, thou mayst be sure that the groves, not far away, are
full of fathers, brothers, lovers.”

“I wish I were a brother to some of them.”

“Then thou’dst be a Jew.”

“I’d forget that in being a lover to the others.”

“Thou wouldst not change thy faith for a woman?”

“Now, I’d swear I would not. If like most men, and in love, I’d swear
I would; and then, having gotten my new priestess, in a little while,
backslide and drag her with me, or make her heart weep. My comfort in the
last estate being my consistency, if not my constancy. What a mad rout it
is when religion and love, born twins, cross purposes?”

“That’s a very true, yet bitter speech. I’ll tell the Hebrew maidens to
beware.”

“Better tell me to beware, now. It’s the beginning that makes the
trouble. No beginning, then no after folly.”

The procession glided past and the pilgrims followed at a distance.

“We are within an arm of dear old Jabbock,” remarked Ichabod, as they
came to a river-bank, later.

“Ah, ha! my chartless pilot, does the current whisper its name to thee,
in Hebrew? I’d not wonder if it did, since every thing is clannish in
this country.—I hope there is no more swimming for us to do.”

“Its tumbling waters are full of voices to me, blending with echoes of
things of the past; but one who spoke a thousand times more tenderly than
ever spoke murmuring waters, told me its name, knight.”

“Nourahmal? No! rather some one of those pious beauties we passed not
long ago. Oh, roguish Ichabod, I remember thou wert away a long time in
the morning after our breakfast of peas and grapes. But, dear Ichabod,”
continued Sir Charleroy, feigning rebuke, “didst thou so soon forget thy
little convert of Jericho? I wonder if thou lifted up thy voice and wept
when thou kissed the maid that told thee the river’s name? Come, confess,
and I’ll call thee Isaac.”

“Raillery of prime quality, knight; but raillery and ridicule, though
keenly pointed, are generally bad arrows for long range.”

“Well, no matter. I’m glad thou knowest the place, if thou dost know it.
Who told thee the name of this water?”

“One with a voice to me sweeter, kinder than that of any betrothed
lover’s ever can be.”

“Very, very eloquent thou art. Indeed, if we were in Italy, I’d guess
’twas a syren had communed with thee; in France, a Crusader troubadour;
in Rhineland, the water sprite, Lurline; but, being in this wondrous
country of revelations, apparitions, prophets, angels and the like, I
can only as a catechumen, ask thy dulcet informer’s name?”

“How oddly thou dost talk when thou talkest as a double man; half
sneering infidel; half Christian preacher.”

“A truce, Ichabod. That may be a home-thrust well aimed, but it’s enough
that one of us be bitter. It’s sometimes natural to me, but not to thee.”

“A bee-sting will redden the high priest’s brow.”

“Well, I’ll not sting thee. Who gave the name of the river?”

“Master, one to me alone of all the world an angel, my mother. I was born
near here, and the memories of a youth made happy by one all patient, all
loving, rises above and survives all changes.”

“My noble friend, forgive my repartee. I’m glad, truly, that we are so
lucky as to have this knowledge.”

“Lucky? Then all is not fate; there is some chance, if no Providence?”

“Pardon more; the bee-sting is still on thy brow. Ichabod, I can not help
my feelings, which sometimes make me think that only God can tread the
hidden, narrow line between stern fate and happy accident. They say the
Sybil wrote her prophetic decrees upon leaves and flung them recklessly
to the inconstant winds. Just so we’re in decreed courses, swirled by
chance gusts.”

“Yet we two are getting on well together.”

“So do chance and fate; the pity is to the waif that falls between them.”

“I wonder how here, in Holy Land, thou canst think of any control but
Providence.”

“Wonder? So do I. I’m a bundle of wonderings.”

“Listen to Jabbock.”

“I do, more attentively than Jabbock to me. What of it?”

“Grander rivers are forgotten; why is it so remembered?”

“We’re forgotten, meaner men remembered.”

“This river sings through the centuries of history the song of a fugitive
of pale heart, who in sheer desperation, long, long ago, seized a
fleeting hope and became a prince, having power to prevail with God.”

“Ah, Jacob, who worked fourteen years to win a woman. It was, I’m sure,
the woman that nerved him to attempt greatness. Such a woman! Had she
been like our moderns she would have jilted him, or eloped with him,
before the end of one of the fourteen years.”

“I’ll not tilt with thy sarcasms. It were much better to remember that
he, a pigmy, the night in his soul, as that about him, black as Erebus,
grappled with the mighty, unknown, unseen apparition to find he was
holding Deity. The mysteries of crossing fates and chances are as open
nut-bur compared to that of all weakness prevailing with Omnipotence, my
good master, I think.”

“But ever after that joust, Jacob was a cripple!”

“Oh, but remember, as he halted on his thigh the sun rose over Penuel,
‘the place of seeing God,’ by interpretation. He was stronger for his
laming!”

“A very ‘Timor-lame,’ this prince of great chances and mean ways.”

“Time and trial repaired Jacob’s spotted soul.”

“There was much room for the mending, I do vow.”

“His weightings bespeak some charity. Think; a weak mother, one designing
wife, and plenty of wealth!”

“Well, ’tis true, these were enough to have undone St. Anthony, if the
devil had only thought to have tried them all at once upon him!”

“Sir Charleroy swings back to his old bitterness toward women; did he
never love one?”

“No, not as a lover. I was never tried except by designing coquetries
that nauseated finally.”

“Perhaps, like most solitary men, thou so revered thyself by habit that
there was no room for other person in thy heart.”

“I never met one I deemed perfect and available.”

“Better to have loved some one far from perfect than none. If thy
heart-fount had been once touched it would have set thy imaginations to
weaving halos about the one touching. Thou wouldst have enthroned her by
a love that would have transformed both. She would have become in time
what she was in love’s young dream; while thou wouldst have grown by the
experience to be twice the man thou hadst been—or art.”

“The sun in thy head is settling down into thy heart, Jew.”

“Is that so, Charleroy?”

“Yes, but not to harm; heart sunsets ripen heart fruits; that’s the
reason the autumn suns run low; the low suns ripen. But after all, I’m
not so very miserable in heart. I’ve loved some women; mother and my
Mary——”

“Filial love, religious love! somewhat akin and blessing him that feels
their mellow, exalting influences; but, oh, Sir Charleroy, they do
not fill completely the heart’s temple. There are places there for
the expression of ruddy, glorious lover’s love. The three make up an
all-comprehending trinity, and fill the man as Deity the universe.
I see religious love in adoration of God’s Fatherhood, mother love
in the tender leading of the Spirit, lover’s love in the priceless
self-surrender of our Saviour. That made the angels sing, and in the
being of each of our race there is room, aye need, of the melody which
only the experiencing of this passion in full can produce. In love-mating
is a wondrous thrill which can be but faintly voiced even by those who
have experienced it.

“There are other passions which ebb with time, or, being well fed, wax
gross; not so with this one. Inspired by the potencies of life, which
lie at the very core of being, it wells up in rills, rivers and torrents
of pleasurable sensations. Out from the heart it goes to the remotest
members, only to double on its courses and dash again through the beating
heart, heating its flame by its doubling and hasting, making the beatings
wilder by its hastings, and then hasting more because of the wilder
beatings. Of all emotions love is the most tireless. It increases by
giving, grows stronger by action and proclaims the secret of its heavenly
birth, its immortality, by the way in which it deepens and ripens with
every movement of its life. Aye, more, it proclaims itself the power of
the resurrection by the way it transforms the lives it possesses. A man
may be a lout, ever so crude in fiber, but this musical flame passing
through his being, burns up his dross, making him all brave, courteous,
tender, poetic, religious! Yea, religious! If it do not utterly redeem
a sinner possessed by it, it will take him nearer to salvation than
any other power known on earth, except the Spirit of Grace. It is as
the opening of the eyes of the blind man, for it opens the doors of
a new sense to the realizing of a world as new as delightful. As the
thrummings on the harp-strings someway leave a lasting sonorousness
and tenderness in the supporting woods about the lyre, so leaves this
passion, through the beatings of every wave of it, wealth. Its devotee by
it is inducted into exhaustless new realms and possessions, unalterably
secured to him, and at the same time beyond all computation. He ever
gathers treasures, as a prince from incoming fleets, and is made affluent
beyond all counting. He surpasses all in wealth-getting, and yet is
infinitely apart from the littleness of avarice. It is to him the advent
of charity’s full-orbed day. It may be fancy in him, but it’s to him
very real; the world about, as if having learned his secret, seems to
be dressing for the wedding feast, while all things appear to be coming
very confidentially to him to whisper the divine mandate, ‘marry and
multiply.’ He is trusted, yet trusts; leads, yet follows. He is proud
to display, a little, his conquest, but does so with a sort of alert
charming selfishness, which gives notice to the world that he alone is
to wear the chosen one upon his heart. He realizes the paradox of giving
all and receiving all; the mystery of two lives merged into one by an
utter surrender, each to each, which leaves both infinitely richer than
the sum of all their ownings could make either if possessed by the one
apart from the other. Oh, how almost imperiously each demands that
the other shall surrender all and then how great the joy each feels in
leading the chosen mate to surprises at the munificence and completeness
of the giving up of all by the one who just now demanded all. I do not
know the woman’s heart, but can readily believe it far surpasses the
man’s in its consecration, enjoyment and aspiring. I know the man’s, but
my words are ragged in description. I know that this grand passion makes
him wondrously weak and wondrously strong. Sometimes these inner feelings
come nigh overwhelming him; sometimes they fall upon his life like the
musical ebb-waves on resonant shores. I can not word it all, nor is it
strange, since I am speaking of a life of heavenly flights, and best
expressed by voiceless signs, embraces. In love’s hour the man realizes,
as never before, his lordliness and his pride and ambition are fed by a
growing conviction that all the world is small beside himself and his;
proud as a conqueror of untold wealth, he yields to the tender ties
that unrelentingly bind him and crucifies his native roughness that he
may be more like, more worthy her he rules and obeys. He is made finer;
she stronger. Has she virtues, he appropriates them; at the same time,
by the homage implied by his appropriation, makes them to shine more
brightly on the brow and heart of his queen. He touches the fires on the
altar she has erected within herself to love alone, and the altar-fires
blaze until her whole being is illuminated as a temple on fête days. She
puts on his best parts, and then he revels in delight as he beholds his
virtues refined and so beautifully framed. There are times when, like a
mighty anthem, his passion passes over and through him. Then is he nigh
to madness, being in the mood to slay himself, or another doing aught
to check the rapture of the mighty swellings of the music that pours
over every nerve from head to heart, to limb. Then it is he embraces and
kisses and embraces again; as an inspired artist of music, exhausting
himself to prolong this joy, almost materialized. Indeed, I saw one who
said ‘this is tangible music. I feel it; taste it; see it!’ It seems to
thicken the air until I rise unwinged, and yet in a flight that seems to
me as free and brilliant as that of the golden oriole’s. If the enchanted
enchanter be pure and true, she leads her captive king, made tender and
yet more manly by his captivity, surely upward from tumultuous passion’s
sway to the ambrosial table-lands of higher affection where both may
reign tenderly, bravely, hopefully, forever. I tell thee, knight, the
finest spectacle on earth is a man in his prime, creation’s lord at his
best, sincerely, completely in love with a queenly woman. Next after
getting God into a man’s heart, the greatest blessing is the getting of a
woman of genuine parts therein.”

“Oh, child of the sunny palm land, thou hast imbibed wondrous eloquence.
But thou sayest truly. Now, for the women that are so to queen us men. No
woman that I ever knew of could so intoxicate, transform and translate
me.”

“One like Eve, the gift of God?”

“The first woman, like the first man, was pure without virtue, until
tried; then she fell. I think of her chiefly as being a splendid animal,
yet, as Adam was not left for man’s example, neither was she. I still
think Eve passed by in history to be only what she was full proof that
love which rises no higher than to give all to and for that which was
like the fruit of the tempting tree, good for food and pleasant to the
eyes, is not like the love that at last hung on the tree of Calvary. Oh,
child of Abraham, I hear the ‘_voice of God walking in the garden in the
cool of the day_,’ saying to a world of flitting, false ideals, and those
yearning for pilots and patterns, ‘_Where art thou?_’ I don’t know, for
one, exactly where I am, but I’m going forward and upward someway.”

“Sir Charleroy thou dost dazzle me by thy correspondences and insights,
if I do thee by my pictures. We are quits.”

“But we’ll not quit. This pilgrim idleness has value. I never knew what
I believed until, thus flung out of life’s hurly burly, I had little
company but my thoughts. There was method of reason in God’s taking His
prophets to lone places, to fit them for understanding the rapturing
visions with which He filled them.”

“’Tis so, true; but what thinks the knight of Esther, the beautiful
Queen? She’s the idol and ideal in Israel in all times and places.”

“Wondrous woman! A girl, petted, ill-trained, from poverty suddenly
exalted, surrounded by the skilled intriguants of court, a jealous,
exacting, conceited, harem-demoralized old king for a spouse, she was
then burdened with the salvation of a nation. I’ve so pitied her that
I’ve forgotten to admire how well she did in her trying lot.”

“Can the world ever have a finer figure or presentment of all that is
womanly? I do not challenge thy Mary, but may I not put the two side by
side?”

“Israel has two great women in their way. The one, Esther, exemplifying
all sweetness and the mild strength of a suddenly developed woman, doing
grandly in one emergency when great peril and great love aroused her from
only being an entrancing, petted beauty, to be the heroine of an hour.
But she was not tried by the searching test of a lifetime. She never
meets the needs of mothers seeking an ideal. Rizpah, your other grand
woman, was the mother, even the mother of sorrows, of the Old Testament.
It takes these two to make an ideal, and yet the pattern is incomplete.
God walks yet in the garden where men live, with only these two before
them, and ever and anon they hear the unanswerable, ‘_Where art thou?_’”

“Why, my mentor, master, thou hast touched our Scriptures with the rod
that budded; the whole opens to me as if for the first time. Methinks, if
I were permitted to lay hands now upon one of our sacred volumes, I’d be
fairly overcome by the light that would break out on me from within it.”

“‘The entrance of the word giveth light,’ Ichabod.”

“I’m moved, master, along lines I can not turn from, to the one woman of
all, Mary. She is thy ideal queen of hearts?”

“I’m a pilgrim and follow her, seeing none better.”

“Then thou wouldst be willing to wed such as Mary?”

“Hold! This is sacrilegious! I’ll not think of Mary in any such
comparison. Leave my patron saint upon her high pedestal. I save her for
my soul’s health, as every man should save some noble woman, for an inner
enshrining, to be all that woman may be at her best, his beloved, his
inspirer, and yet touching no spring of his life save such as responds
to things of moral grandeur.”

“Ah, master, I’ve not yet been enamored fully of this woman. I feel a
stranger to her, but I feel the meaning of the finer things thou hast
just spoken. I have the need of which thou dost speak, and my life, like
a babe, often now goes out crying, ‘Mother, mother.’ As we lay, yesterday
night, beneath the quiet firmament, I gazed up and asked a sign of God
in prayer. It was a baby cry I know, but I saw one star that staid and
staid above me. It seemed to be warmed with reddish tintings, and I
thought that its glitterings were proof that it was taking part in some
anthem of the morning stars. Then I dreamed that my mother was in the
star all luminous, holy, happy, looking down in constant guardianship of
her outcast boy! Oh, can a child ever be outcast utterly to mother? Can
it be that she, who so loved me and so loved God, can hate me now, loving
her and loving God as I do? God knows my heart! Will he not tell her
all? Her constant mandate to me was, ‘keep a loyal heart, an undefiled
conscience.’ I’ve tried to do both, but then her soul loathed apostacy.
Does she loathe me for leaving Israel’s fold? My heart all torn, cries
to-day, ‘Mother, mother!’ I’m sure she can not hate me. To-morrow I hope
I shall pray at her grave.”

Then the vehement Israelite fell on the ground in an ecstasy, utterly
unconscious of his companion, and, kissing the earth as if already he was
by that parent’s resting place, wildly called, “Mother! my mamma! oh,
I’m so lonely, so unhappy! Let me come! God, God, let me go to mother!
Mother, I did it as thou saidst. I’m no leper. I’m not a heretic! I
love thee. I love God. I’ve kept pure. I’ve trusted God’s care in all
my trouble. Mamma, my mamma, let Ichabod embrace thee!” Exhausted and
quivering he there lay. The knight was silent. It was holy ground, and
the whole thicket about seemed to be glowing with the fire that burns
without consuming.

The travelers were encamped again under the sky, and it was now night.
A shooting star sped through the constellation of Orion and fell down
toward the Dead Sea.

“An omen, Jew.”

“Explain, brother knight.”

“Life; bright, short, ending in gloom.”

“Look at the fixed stars.”

“They preach fate.”

“Perhaps, but they have the majority. Few fall; I think, too, Someone
holds them.”

“Thy hopefulness colors thy faith.”

“Thy murmurings run toward final madness, knight; the Rabbis, good men,
so taught me.”

“If one star falls may not all? If Providence hold them, why does one
escape?”

“Thou hast heard that the giant Orion having lost his eyes, afterward
regained his sight by turning his sockets toward the rising sun; that
meteor we saw shot through the constellation Orion. Look up.”

“A happy simile and pungent thrust, Jew.”

“He that sent the lightnings to show us our way out of dread Jericho,
most likely now commissioned some angel to swing a meteor across the sky
as a torch or beacon for our guidance. The trail of flame teaches me
that God is writing His royal signature on some great message.”

“This world is too vast and too thronged with insignificants, such as we,
for such especial carings on God’s part. There are too many kings, too
many shepherds, too many follies for Him to constantly watch any one or
two.”

“Backward, forward; now good, now bad. What a charging, changing knight!
Pray God to get thee right and then fix thee.”

Their converse was interrupted by a prolonged trumpet blast, echoing from
hill to hill. Sir Charleroy sprang to his feet and clasping his sword
hilt, cried eagerly, “We’re ambuscaded!”

“No, by the glory of God, ’twas the temple call! How grand it sounds away
in this wilderness!”

“No, no, Jew, I’ve heard that call; this one had six responses.”

“’Twas echo’s magic! Didst thou not notice how the sound spread as it
traveled in a sort of sheet of melody? Then it rose and fell from low
hill to high. One blast; seven responses. Nature proclaiming against fate
and chance; the covenant number.”

“I’m not so confident that it’s a miracle; what if it were some Mamelukes
or Druses, planning one of their pious immolations of heretics with us
for the victims?”

“Nay, brother, It’s ‘_Purim_’; that feast is now due, and always begins
at early starlight. I know it. Come, I’ll put it to the proof.”

“Hold; poets are more rash than knights in a charge, but not so skillful
in retreat! Whither wouldst thou?”

“I’ll spy out the trumpeters and report.”

“Not alone. I’ll go, too. This camp will care for itself if they beyond
be friends; if enemies, why then, without consulting us, they will care
for all we have. But this,” said the knight, toying with his sword, “was
blessed by a priest to preach to infidels.”

CHAPTER XI.

THE FEAST OF PURIM.

Stealthily Ichabod, followed by Sir Charleroy, approached the place from
which the trumpet call had sounded. The foliage was dense, the necessary
way somewhat winding, and these circumstances, together with the fact
that it was expedient to move with great caution, made the progress
of the explorers very slow. The last ray of day had faded, sung away
by the evening bird and insect chorusers, whose concert strains, like
the vanishing notes of æolian harps swept by dying breezes, were now
blending, without a line to mark the place of transition, into the lull
of the night. Nature’s lullaby to tired, drowsy life. It was a witching
hour in the woods, and the scene that lay just beyond the pilgrims in an
opening by Jabbock was an enchantment. The river, reflecting the moon
rays and the lights of torches borne by many intermingling feasters,
flowed silently along like a stream of mingled silver and fire, while
tree and shrub along its sides, as green as green could be, bore as
fruits lights of many colors. In the opening, surrounded by beacons,
banners and the lamp-bearing trees, the beauty as well as the center of
all was a magnificent patriarchal tent, made of costly materials. About
the pavilion were mounds of earth, elevated upon high tripods, seven
in all, in symbols of the seven temple candle-sticks. On each mound
there blazed a fire fed by resinous faggots, and the lights of the fires
falling upon the folds of the tent, caught up here and there by bands of
blue and gold, made the whole glisten like jeweled silk.

“Hallelujah,” with suppressed joy, exclaimed Ichabod, “the tabernacle of
God with men!”

“Hush, rash man, and watch!” rebukingly replied Sir Charleroy.

“Watch? Why, my soul is in my eyes. I’m as one famished for years
smelling a feast!”

As they looked on the beautiful scene, they perceived that the front
of the pavilion was lifted up and stretched forward as a canopy over
an altar, richly decorated with twined olive branches and blood-red
blossoms. A little way off, and yet partly encircling the altar, were
little walnut trees, each tree having on its branches glistening lamps,
half hidden by wreaths of hollyhocks and asters.

The moon sank behind the hills; the night darkened, but the fires and
lamps burned still more brightly.

“It’s like fairy-land, Jew,” after little, spake Sir Charleroy.

“More beautiful, knight. Wait and see.”

There was a burst of music, instantly followed by the entrance of youths
and old men; some singing, others vigorously playing ugabs, reed-flutes,
and tambourines. Somewhere near, though unseen by the watchers, were
happy women; they recognized their voices in refrains, choruses, and
merry peals of laughter.

“Well, this is not warlike, but what is it, Jew?” queried Sir Charleroy.

“Wait a little.”

There came a commanding trumpet blast. Its tones died away in the
melody-waves of a score of viols, managed by unperceived musicians. Then
silence; presently the huge blue curtain that hung across the tent, just
back of the outstretching front canopy, parted, and there emerged an aged
man of stately form, wearing an Aaronic mitre and priestly robes; rich as
well as ample. He paused before the altar a moment, as if in prayer, and
then suddenly the air far and wide quivered with a sound like a cyclone
hail. There were also cornet blasts mingling therewith.

“Heavens, Jew, explain!”

“Selah! These the drums and waking clappers; the signal to be given. Now
for ‘Purim’ in earnest.”

The groves about seemed to be alive and moving, for from every direction
toward the center gathered men and boys, bearing palm branches and
torches; these, as they advanced, moved with speeded pace, presently
they were in a perfect maze, the music of every kind growing louder and
louder, then seeming to die away.

“They’re carrying the edicts of Ahasuerus to the Jews to defend
themselves, master.”

“A fine play, Jew!”

Now the blue curtain parted again, and from the pavilion emerged another
stately form, in all except that he lacked priestly robing, the very
counterpart of the aged man first at the altar.

“Glory to Shaddah! again I see the holy brothers, Harrimai,” cried
Ichabod.

The second patriarch motioned silence; all in the assembly bent their
heads in breathless attention and the patriarch spoke: “Brethren of
Israel, hearken and give God all the glory who this hour permits us, His
chosen people, to celebrate in peace, with joy, our glad Purim feast.
This day, Jehovah granted me the most wholesome comfort of hearing from a
pashaw of our scourge that the last of the armies of the Moslem, beaten
by want and internal discord, were melting out of our land like fog
banks before the rising sun. He certified to me for a handful of barley
(for which he had come to stand in need) that those hated cross-bearing
invaders, the knights, were gone, never to return. So God has worked in
our behalf as in the days of Esther, setting our enemies to destroying
one another and then compassing the slinging out of His holy places, the
abominable remnants. So may His thunders, as of old, forever beat on the
heads of all who lift themselves against our Israel!”

There was a murmur of applause; first like the buzz of the noonday
insects of the groves, then like a careering hurricane. The applause
swelled up, drowning all sounds, causing the fires to flicker and flame,
making the pavilion’s sides sway and wave as if all were feeling the joy
present. The musical instruments quickly now caught up the strain of the
cheery voices, and all was in a perfect whirl of excitement with one
thought, ‘praise.’ It was free and fluent, because it came from hearts
practiced in the ultimate swings from joy to sorrow and then from sorrow
to joy. For half an hour nearly, the rhapsody continued, nor did it
temperate until sheer exhaustion fell on the revelers.

Presently, after an interval of comparative quiet, there came a flourish
of cornets and a roar of the rattling clappers. It was a signal followed
by the uplifting of the old priest’s hands as if in benediction. All
heads were bowed; some of the congregation knelt, and then he spoke in
sonorous, yet soothing voice, words of benediction: “Blessed art thou, Oh
Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hath wrought all miracles for our
fathers and also for us, at this time.”

Then the people stood up, and the second patriarch, advancing to the
front of the altar, began reading from the holy _Kethubim_ of the Jews,
the story of the Purim. At each mention of Esther’s name the congregation
murmured “how beautiful is goodness;” at each mention of Haman’s name
all in the congregation stamped their feet, also making gurgling noises
with their throats, to imitate the false prince’s strangling; the whole
being made more hideous by the shriek of discordant cornet notes and the
springing of rattles.

The foregoing scene suddenly changed; a procession of maidens, in
graceful evolutions, emerging from the surrounding groves, presenting a
living picture, really entrancing. They were all richly robed in garments
of graceful flow, caught round their waists by flowered girdles. Some
wore sashes of jassamine, while others were crowned with lilies or asters
or violets. Their arms and ankles were clad only with circlets from which
pendant bells gave forth music at every motion. Seven of the foremost
maidens bore lamps; behind each of these followed one with a harp; behind
each harper two with tambourines and cymbals. Seven times this maiden
train, with a step in time, half march, half dance, waltzed around the
canopied altar. Then were given seven cornet blasts, the procession
leaders waving their lamps with each blast, after which there was
perfect silence. Now the old priest moved forward a little toward the
procession; the congregation meanwhile gathering in a semi-circle, just
outside of all, and he addressed the assembly: “Brethren and children, I
would speak to you a little of the ‘Virtuous Woman.’ Daughters of Israel,
hearts of homes to be, hopes of the nation looking for a Deliverer and
deliverers yet to be born; hear me! Israel knows no queen of all womanly
perfections like unto Esther, the beautiful. Evermore take her for your
meditation by day and your dreams by night. Then shall you all realize to
yourselves, your fathers, brothers, husbands, all that the holy Proverbs
of our _Kethubim_ declares of the true woman. Then the priest taking the
parchment, solemnly and in mellow tones, read the last chapter of the
book, ‘the birth-day chapter,’ a verse prophetic for every day of the
longest month, as the Jews believe.”

When the reader ceased, the encampment was dim, many of the lights having
been quenched. Then the congregation joined in chanting a soft-aired
Jewish hymn.

“The devotions are ended; now for the sports;” so spoke Ichabod; the
first words spoken between him and the knight during their observation
of the last part of the proceedings before the pavilion. He had scarcely
made the announcement when the second patriarch appeared, dressed in
somber black, leading by the hand a maiden of wondrous beauty, wearing
also black, in heavy trails; on her head a golden crown. As they
appeared the applause as at first burst forth, but now blended with
distinguishable cries of “Hail Esther!” “Hail Mordecai!”

“It’s the play, knight. Watch that pair.”

“No fear, Jew, such a wondrous beauty! Had I been Haman and she Esther,
I never could have crossed her. Heavens, Jew, it is well said the people
of promise produce the most beautiful women of earth. That’s why Deity
elected one of them, through whom to be incarnate, I think.”

“I think I heard the knight say, awhile ago, that the revolution of all
religions was to come when men’s admiration for women rose far above
rapture over outward form. Is it not so?”

“Ah, it’s thy remembering and my forgetting that keeps us crossing each
other! But no matter; am I looking at an angel or not?”

“That’s the priest’s only daughter; his idol, ay, the idol of every youth
in all these parts of Israel. No nation can be dead while it produces
such flowers.”

Suddenly the camp blazed with re-illumination, and then began a carnival.
Games and dancers were everywhere. Some, evidently men, were dressed as
women, and others, evidently women, were garbed as men. For one season,
Purim, the command against the interchange of garments between the sexes,
was suspended. Each reveler carried a little box. If he asked a favor
or a question, the reply was a challenge to try lots. Partners were so
chosen, tasks given and predictions made. Laughter was everywhere, and
wine was flowing.

“Ichabod, I haven’t tasted wine since Acre! Why dost thou not introduce
me yonder?”

“Wait; they will all be mellow, soon. They may be, too, for it’s a law
that a Jew is not deemed drunk at ‘_Purim_’ so long as he can discern
between a blessing for Mordecai and a curse for Haman.”

“Heavens! how they do imbibe.”

“It’s natural for doves to twitter after a thunder storm. They remember
the past troubles.”

“Ay; but I fear they will consume all the beverage before we are with
them. We have had plenty of trouble; now take me in to twitter with those
doves.”

Ichabod started, as if to lead the way, and then drew back and moaned,
“no, no; it cannot be. I’m forever anathema here, to them! I could bear
their hate, not their contempt. They may call me renegade, but never
spaniel nor hypocrite! If I appeared among them they would soon know, if
they do not already, that Ichabod is changed. Then they’d sneer and tell
me that I tried to play double, or thinking my people’s faith not good
enough for me, I yet hungered for their feasts. No, no; it must not be!
To-morrow, I hope to pray at my mother’s grave. I’d choke then if I had
to remember I’d done aught that she, living, would have thought mean.”

“Now, I’ll not persuade thee, Jew, but go alone.”

“That’s reckless! thou mayst regret it. They may become riotous, being
half drunk, and beat thee as a Haman. No, stay away.”

“No dissuasion, Jew, but just change garments. It’s the fashion
to-night.” The Jew complied, remarking as he did:

“Will the knight wear this leather thong?”

“Heavens! no, nor the brand on thy neck.”

“Christian knights commanded me to wear one, and burned into my flesh the
other years ago; they deemed it necessary to mark all Jews for hatred.”

“Dear Ichabod, I never counseled branding any man!”

“I believe it. I have forgotten all bitterness about these marks and have
borne them as my cross.

“But, Sir Charleroy, don’t wear thy cross in their sight!”

“For once, I’ll cover it.” So saying he hid the emblem.

The comrades parted, and Sir Charleroy quickly found himself by the
maiden who personated Esther. He approached unnoticed until he pleasantly
said: “Queen of Shushan, a man out there behind a clump of Sharon roses,
played me a game of lots. I lost the game, and he has put it on me to
come to the Queen to fix the forfeit I shall pay.” The maiden turned her
head haughtily and examined the speaker from head to foot with repelling
gaze. It was her way of freezing off the amorous swains who constantly
aimed to pay her court. But when her eyes met those of the self-possessed
stranger, she gave a little start. Perhaps she caught sight, by some
omen, of her fate; perhaps she felt the magnetism of the strong will
which for the first time presented itself. In any event, it was the first
time she had ever been alone, face to face, with such as he; a stalwart
man, all reverential, yet all self-possessed. They were well matched, and
they both felt it, intuitively, instantly.

“Who art thou?”

“A child of God.”

“Of Israel?”

“By faith, most holy of Abraham’s seed,” responded Sir Charleroy.

“Thy speech bewrayeth thee as lacking our shibboleth.”

“I’ve been a life long wanderer. Thou wouldst not reject one whom
involuntary exile had robbed of tokens?”

“But I can not be free with an uncertified stranger. I’m afraid I err in
tarrying here ’till now.”

“Hospitality is the boast of pious Hebrews who obey Him that ‘loveth the
stranger in giving him food and raiment.’ Thou hast the Great Father’s
law: ‘Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land
of Egypt.’ Some have by hospitality unawares entertained angels, thou
knowst.”

“I’d like to entertain an angel; are they ever so human-like as thou?”
she smiled.

“Had I known the Esther of to-night long enough to convince her that my
freedom was sincere, I’d say that she was a fine example of the union of
the angelic in the human.”

The maiden laughed. The incense was agreeable, and the freedom of this
feast-time justified her acceptance of this novel, bold flattery. Your
proud, daring woman is very vulnerable to such assaults. The world
often wonders why such women so often, after all, surrender; but that’s
because the world does not appreciate the dexterity in such jousts of
such skilled men of the world as Sir Charleroy; or how grateful to
self-admiring beauties the admiration of superior intellects is.

“Well, will thou give me thy name?”

“Certainly. For to-night, Ahasuerus?”

“A presumptious jest, sir.”

“No, for I admire and respect Esther, that’s here.”

“And then?”

“I plead for help; gain me admittance to the festivities, and escape from
inquiry further, as to my identity.”

“And afterward, be called by my people brazen by thee, a little fool!”

“Art thou driven from right, the claim of hospitality, by fear of a lie?”

“What if thou wert a Bedouin spy, or a hated cross follower?”

“Thou art a noble hearted maiden.”

“Ah, who told thee so?”

“Thy face.”

“What is that to thee, if true?” she blushed a little.

“Could’st thou drive from thy bosom a fleeing kid, there seeking refuge
from pursuing lions?”

“I do not know ’till tried. Thou art at any rate no kid; there is no
lion. If thou desirest refuge, see the path of departure is the one by
which thou cam’st hither.”

“Well, then, farewell.”

The knight made as if he would go, but he knew he would not. The motion
gave him excuse for looking sad, and he knew that next to a handsome face
a sad one most easily conquers a woman.

“Tarry a moment ’till I think. Can I trust thee?” she was hesitating.

“I’ve trusted thee, and that’s ever the best proof of fidelity.” Women
like to think they are especially trusted.

“Well——but, see, my father comes; there’s no time for argument; let me
speak!”

As the aged priest drew near, Esther saluted him, and said, “Father, let
me take this Galileean stranger to the youths and their games? He claims
our hospitality.”

The priest, wont to be on the alert, was disarmed by the magic word
hospitality; then, too, for a long time before, having been wifeless, he
had been wont to put his daughter forward, according large confidence to
her; hence his reply:

“If thou knowest him, Rizpah.”

“I do.”

“Welcome, brother, what is thy name?” said Harrimai.

Rizpah, his daughter, quickly made reply, “Ahasuerus, and I’ve laughed at
the _coincidence_ until he has been ashamed to repeat it.”

“’Tis strange, surely, and not like a Jewish one. I must examine the
family rolls to-morrow. Peace be unto thee, son,” and the old man turned
toward his pavilion. Esther plucked a lily from her crown and handed it
to Sir Charleroy saying: “Here, king, a token.”

“Of what?”

“Shushan; in our tongue, the name of the flower signifies ‘surrender.’”

“They say, Esther, that Judith wore a crown of lilies when she
assassinated Holophernes. Is there any danger to me impending?”

“Thou hast a lily. It is said to ward off enchantments, too.”

“I am enchanted. I do not want to awaken. In Egypt they call this the
lotus, flower of unrestrained pleasure.”

“For now then, we’ll call it lotus.”

“All gods, even Osiris, bless thee, Esther.”

So the twain were charmed comrades, till watch fires were dim and the
palm shadows were creeping in, like funeral attendants, to carry away
the spirit of the dying revel. Here and there was heard anon the voices
commending this one and that to pleasant slumbers. The stars were
withdrawing behind dawn’s feathery curtains, and over all, at intervals,
was heard the voice of the chanticleer, triumphantly proclaiming the
coming day.

Charleroy and Rizpah were left alone with each other at the end of the
last game.

The maiden gave a coy, furtive glance and tardily drew away from the
knight. The language of the drawing-room of the day, is as old as the
centuries, and that maid of the wilderness used it as finely as a queen,
to say without words, “it’s time we part; please say so first, nor leave
to me, the hostess, the first suggestion of a wish to have thee go——”

Still the knight spake not.

He was delighted and averse to breaking the first pleasure spell of years.

The Jewish maiden, with fine courtesy, renewed the subject: “King,
methinks, thou art anxious to exchange the grove for the palace.”

“I can never think of weariness when restful Esther is nigh.”

“But thy life is precious to thy subjects; care for it, and go with
freshness to to-morrow’s cares of state.”

“Ah, queen, I too keenly realize that with thy departure my kingdom fades
to nothingness.”

“A truce, my liege.”

“Granted, and any thing else, to the half of my kingdom.”

Rizpah startled the birds in the shrubbery to premature morning song,
with a merry laugh. It was a finishing charge, that laugh, by which she
carried her point, for the knight quickly questioned “Why this?”

“I was only thinking how odd thou wouldst appear if thou didst wear away
my pepelum. Thy subjects would think their king mad, if he met them
veiled as a woman.”

“Pardon, queen, I’ve been so absorbed, I forgot myself—” So saying,
he gracefully transferred from his shoulder to hers the shawl she had
permitted him for the night to wear. As the maiden adjusted it, something
fell out of its folds, glittering to her feet.

“Findings keepings;” she laughed, and stooped to pick up the object. As
she arose she turned it slowly toward the setting moon the better to
inspect the find.

The knight was alarmed, but it was too late to prevent her examination
now of his Teutonic cross and chain.

At a glance, Rizpah saw it was an emblem, of all others, hated by her
people, and with a low, startled cry she made a motion as if to hurl
it from her, but she checked herself with a powerful effort; suddenly
turning her black, piercing eyes upon her companion she took a step back.
She stood there the embodiment of an imperative question.

The knight quietly said: “Be calm, dear maid.”

Over her countenance passed a cloud which to the man all too plainly
said: “How darst thou use such terms to me?” and then the face hardened
again to imperative interrogation.

“Thou trustedst me four hours ago, under the lotus, try now my sincerity
by any sterner test.”

Turning her eyes full on his, with a voice without a quaver, but in
deep, measured tones indicative of suppressed emotion, she questioned as
she held out toward him his emblem, “What’s this?”

“Concealment from thee, having trusted me as thou hast, would be futile
not only, but hateful; thou knowst the meaning of the sign.”

“Who art thou then?”

“A Christian knight!”

“An enemy of my people everywhere; a spy here!” she exclaimed.

“No, never a spy! a true Christian knight never was such! Our warfare is
open and equal. I’m degraded by the defense from such an odious charge!”

“Why debate thy methods; ’tis enough for me to know thou art a foe to me
and mine.”

“No enemy of thine, but rather the friend of all humanity, woman.”

“Bloody friends I’ve heard!”

“No! Each one of my order is sworn, by awful vow, to protect the
traveler, the poor, the weak and woman with our last drop of blood! If we
two were all alone here and one of our lives must be forfeited to save
the other’s, mine would joy to go first.”

“Words are cheap, and thou can’st use them finely, knight.”

“Thou knowst, maiden, to what that cross alludes.”

“The Nazarene Imposter!”

“His followers revere Him?”

“Like madmen, they follow their phantom!”

“Didst ever hear of one wearing that sign, being untrue to it?”

“No, it’s their dread black-art.”

“Wouldst thou trust me if I swore by it?”

“I might; but I’d fear that devils would flock out of the airy deep to
witness thy vowing. Spare me that horror!”

“Maiden, thou’lt craze me by thy distrust and wild words. In God’s name
tell me what to do!”

“Swear, but wave back the evil spirits, if thou art wont to have them.”

“That sign is their lasting terror; but the silent palms and the stars
alone shall witness, ay, the God of all, as well. Here, make thou the
words as thou wilt. Now, I kiss the cross I love, and am ready. He suited
the action to the words. The maiden drew near to him, looking down into
his eyes searchingly and seemed assured by their serene frankness.”

“Go on, Rizpah, I’ll bind my soul with any words coined, and, remember
that I believe that perjury would consign me to misery untold here;
eternal woe hereafter!”

“I’ll trust thy solemn asseverations; they say that a superstition on the
right side will make even a Philistine bearable. Repeat, ‘I swear never
to harm any of Rizpah’s kin or clan, except in self-defense.’”

He complied.

“Again, ‘I swear to depart peacefully at once, and no more seek
companionship with the people this night met.’”

He complied, but murmured “cruelty.”

“And how?” she questioned.

“Wilt add a little?”

“Add what?”

“Add this ‘except by permission of the one ordaining my vow.’”

“It is so fixed.”

“I then swear it all.”

“Well, now go,” and she pointed to the hills.

“I obey, but yet plead delay.”

She hesitated and fell from being master to being mastered.

“Why, what benefits delay?”

“Oh, woman, I yearn as only a lonely heart can, to enjoy a little while
the fellowship and hospitality of thy people! For years homeless; for
months friendless, I’ve come to feel worthless. This is the first bright
hour in my life for many a day. Perhaps, maiden of Israel, thou mightst
make life worth living to me.”

It was a charge on her sympathy, and he knew it would succeed.

“A Crusader, ‘one of the armies of God,’ boasting a divine call to
conquer and convert the world, so talking?”

“Our armed crusades are ended forever; my occupation’s gone.”

She had hesitated, now she pitied the man, and woman-like, again
surrendered while she protested.

“I do not think there could come great harm from thy staying until
sunrise repast.”

“Bless thee, the nine sun gods bless thee, Esther.”

“Heathen!”

“Well; an Egyptian-Christian-Jew taught me to say this when too cheerful
to be solemn, and pious enough not to be frivolous.”

“An Egyptian-Hebrew-Christian! He must have been an Arab. That
name means the ‘mixed.’ But go to the men’s tents; to-morrow
I’ll have more wisdom. Peace and grace to thee; good night,
Christian-Heathen-Hebrew-Arabic-Egyptian!” She laughingly spoke and the
unbending made the knight, bold. He addressed her:

“I’d sleep in perfect peace, if Rizpah would give me a token.”

“I? what?” and the maiden drew back, offended. Her innocency remembered
no token then, but such solicited by her maiden friends, or given at
times to her father, a kiss.

“Place thy hand in mine, Rizpah.” She quickly complied, glad she was
mistaken, as to her suspicion and blushing within, as she thought how
strangely, easily, her mind had had the thought, “Well, now what, knight?”

“Promise me that while I’m permitted to tarry among thy people, I shall
have thy heart’s friendship; as freely, as loyally bestowed as if I were
thy brother.”

“Canst trust me, a woman, a girl, almost a stranger?”

“I trust thy woman’s heart as Joshua’s men of old trusted Rahab, a wreck,
but still a woman. Thou art infinitely more noble than she.”

“But men think us weak, fitful, garrulous.”

“Responsibility makes the weakest of thy sex heroines and pity is the
gateway to their hearts. Thou hast my life and my happiness as thy
responsibility; dost pity me?”

“Yes: go now. A Gentile hater of my people shall see of what metals
Jewish maidens are.”

CHAPTER XII.

ASTARTE OR MARY?

      “Who could resist; who in the universe?
      She did breathe ambrosia; so immerse
      My existence in a golden clime,
      She took me like a child of sucking time,
      And cradled me in roses. Thus condemned
      The current of my former life was stemmed:
      I bowed a tranced vassal.”—KEATS.

The Teutonic Knight of Saint Mary, through all his changing fortunes from
the time of his knighthood’s vow, preserved his moral integrity, his
loyalty to the lofty pattern of life set forth by the Queenly exemplar,
Mary, the mother of Jesus. Crusader days had so far improved his life as
to make him the outspoken denouncer of all impurity of life. He thought
his creed and his committal thereto complete. A change came over him. He
that, in the storm of battle, had often cried as his law and his delight
“_Deus Vult_,” “God wills,” now feared to seek to know, much less to do,
that will. The intoxications of a new love were upon him; unconsciously
he was suffering his queen to be veiled, eclipsed; and he yielded to the
tide that swept him toward the Jewish maiden. Sometimes his conscience
smote him, but he parleyed with it, called it a fool, or placated it by
the assurance that this whole matter could be stopped any time at will.
Like many another man, forgetting all else except that he was a refined
animal, he passed away from the beacons of Bethlehem to the chambers of
Imagery, the gods of Egypt. In chains of roses, though with many fine
Christian sentiments on his lips, he went heart first, head first, into
an utter committal of all his being to the possession of his enchanter.
He expected to regard the laws of the land and society, but nothing
more. He was led by his tempting spirit to Ramoth Gilead, now sometimes
called Gerara or Gerash. There it was that Rizpah’s family took up its
abode. With them, and of them, was Sir Charleroy, a welcome guest, his
welcome secured by his own personal efforts to please, in part; but more
through the _finesse_ of Rizpah, who having promised to be a sister, was
permitting her mind to wonder what he might become if only her friend
were a Hebrew. Such day dreams were sinless, but impolitic if she really
meant to keep herself free and painless, when the parting time came. But
it so happens that the questions and problems of the heart are thrust
ever on life when most responsive, least experienced. The wonder is not
that so many decide them ill, but that youth so pressed, so ardent, so
callow, as a whole decide so fairly well the master social problem. The
life of Harrimai and his following was very Jewish at Gerash. There was
an unusual amount of national pride evinced in that locality for the
times. Sir Charleroy was interested deeply in the place because of its
splendid ruins, he said, but as need not be explained, chiefly on account
of its natural beauties amid which Rizpah was peerless. The Israelitish
colony revered the place for its ancient part in Jewish history, and
because they believed no Moslem invader had ever defiled the place. The
knight and the Jewish father and daughter were in frequent companionship.
They were becoming very intimate, meanwhile gaining power each to make
the other eventually very miserable.

Rizpah was pushing out in a new experience to her. If she were enamored
she did not fully know it. She only knew that the knight’s companionship
was very delightful. If she had any misgivings as to the propriety of her
course she silenced them by saying to herself: “Sir Charleroy has sworn
to leave us forever when I say he shall. I can end this matter any time.”
She thought she could, but the shield of her safety was already too heavy
for her. She could not have said go, had she tried. Time deepened the
perplexity by multiplying the enmeshings of the trio. The knight and
Rizpah were much in each other’s society. They spoke of this as being
a happy circumstance, as youths usually do. “We shall understand each
other so well—too well to misunderstand.” Some of the Jewish young men
were jealous and made some very natural remarks, under the circumstances,
though the remarks were rather bitter with jealousy. The older people,
some of them, anxious for an alliance by marriage with the rich and
powerful Harrimai family, took up the undertone complaints of the young
people of their race. Of course, the murmurings were cloaked with
declarations that they were all for the sake of righteousness! Harrimai,
in heart far from assured, was yet compelled to defend the two secretly
loving, in order to defend his daughter’s fair fame. The two young
people wore the armor of teacher and pupil; the young woman constantly
bepraising the knight’s wondrous knowledge of the antiquities, etc., of
all the out-of-the-way places they visited. So the meshes multiplied,
though the caviling was in part silenced. As teacher and pupil they went
on, and Harrimai knew, as did Sir Charleroy, that the relationship had
its peril, as it existed between a man and woman who could love yet ought
not to love. Rizpah did not at first know how easily a woman’s heart
surrenders to a man to whom she is accustomed to look upward. In fact she
drifted in a delight in all pertaining to the knight; her only outlook
and watchfulness being toward her father. The way the latter at times
keenly, silently observed her and the knight made her uneasy. She knew
intuitively that not far away there was impending on her father’s part
an investigation. She determined to delay, if not prevent it. One day
she bounded into her father’s presence, aglow with enthusiasm over the
wonders unfolded to her by Sir Charleroy during a visit to the ruins of
Gerash’s temple of the sun. The old man was charmed by her description,
and when she declared her intention to pursue her investigations beyond
their city he hesitated to forbid.

“And now, father, I’m going to that old city of the Giants, Bozrah.”

The father, with an effort at firmness, dissuadingly replied:

“We may all go there, but not now. It is better to bide here quietly,
until we learn that the perils of receding war have left assured peace.”

“Why, father, I’m not afraid!”

“I know it; so much the more need for me to be: these over-daring
daughters need over-careful guardians. Some of us aged ones are suffered
to tarry long from paradise, in order that we may see our darlings in
the right path thither.”

“Give me my swift white dromedary and two attendants and I’ll defy the
miserables who ambuscade along the way.”

Just then, there dashed toward them, over the oleander-fringed road which
passed due north along the little river and across the city, a rider on
panting steed.

“It’s the news runner!” said the patriarch.

“Shall we signal him?” she questioned.

“No, daughter, we will meet him yonder, where the two great streets
cross. He will await me.”

When the father and daughter arrived, a crowd had already gathered about
the horseman. Some pressed him for news, but he looked straight ahead
at his horse, now slaking its thirst, and merely snapped out, “News? My
beast is thirsty!”

When Harrimai drew near the rider saluted him and at once unfolded his
budget: “Father, I’m this day from Bozrah. Its ruins are not ruined. All
around there, and from there to here, the herds sleep in the shade, and
the carrion birds that have so long been hovering around us for human
food have fled back to Egypt and Europe and Hades!”

“Praised be the Father of Israel! I shall live then, as I prayed I might,
to see the infidels slung out of our holy places!” So spoke the priest,
and as he affectionately embraced some aged Israelites who gathered about
him, the horseman responded:

“God reigns and Israel has peace.” He put spurs to his horse then, and
dashed away across the river to spread to other hamlets the glorious
news.

Next morning Rizpah, having carried her point, was ready to depart for
Bozrah. She had taken silence on her father’s part for consent, and
pursued her preparations as if it were so ordered. All things being ready
she silenced protest by a good-by kiss.

“But daughter! What escort?”

“Ah,” she thought, “victory! I can go if well attended.” She continued
aloud; “Perhaps Sir Charleroy’s Egyptian might attend me, since our
servants are busy in the groves.” The maiden called to her Ichabod, who
had found a home in Harrimai’s establishment, his identity hidden under
the assumed name Huykos, a name from the Nile land, meaning “Shepherd
King.” “I’ll take it,” said Ichabod, one day to Sir Charleroy, “that all
unknown I may follow my pilgrim comrade and perhaps honor my new found
‘Shepherd King.’”

“One will be a meager escort daughter,” interposed Harrimai.

“Oh, fear for me nothing, father. I’ll quickly be at Bozrah, where there
are Israelites not a few who will be proud to aid thy daughter.”

“No, daughter it must not be. I’ll call the young men from the vineyard,
if thou must go.”

“Another victory,” her heart whispered; then quickly turning to Sir
Charleroy she exclaimed, “My father must not call the workmen from their
tasks; what sayst thou? Wilt serve us both by joining my body-guard,
Ahasuerus? Come, to please my father?”

The knight had hoped for and expected the summons, so needed no urgency
and was instantly preparing for the start.

Harrimai was not pleased by the arrangement, and yet he was forced to
thank the knight for consenting. His native courtliness compelled this
much, and Rizpah’s genius had precluded all gainsaying on his part. And
so they rode away, Rizpah in a delight, which she could not clearly
define; Sir Charleroy blinded already by the cry that at last led to
giant Samson’s blinding, namely: “Get her for me.” Ichabod masked under
his name, Huykos, followed after, knowing that the knight was captive to
the maid and feeling very happy over the circumstance. As he rode, his
mind ran forward to the wedding, and he laughed again and again at the
witty things he imagined himself saying at that wedding. Suddenly the
scene changed from one of careless delight to one filled with the frights
of impending peril. At a turn in the road, from behind a wall, there rose
up a company of Mamelukes. Rizpah saw them the instant her companion did
and exclaimed, as she half turned her camel:

“Let’s race back to Gerash!”

But four dusky sentinels were behind them. They were surrounded.

“’Tis fight or flight, the latter futile,” whispered the knight. They
paused, and Ichabod joined them. Sir Charleroy drawing his sword again
spoke: “Comrade it’s a desperate chance; a dozen to two; but we have
taken such before together!”

“Let the knight say a dozen to three,” exclaimed Rizpah, as she drew from
the folds of her garments a saber before unseen and touched the edge
expert-like with her thumb.

“Oh, brave, pure girl! I don’t fear death; I’d court it for thee,
but”—Sir Charleroy paused and looked unutterable misery; then instantly
recovering and emboldened by the danger that threatened to soon end all,
he exclaimed:

“Rizpah, thou rememberest my knight-vow at Purim; thou shalt see how
I’ll keep it; if I perish, remember I have loved thee as I never loved
any other being.” The words were very vehement, but probably very true.
Rizpah blushed, brushed a tear from her eyes and then, in the frankness
that such an hour engenders, replied: “And I thee—” the rest was drowned
in the wild shout of the Turks as they close about the three. But they
had not counted upon such a reception as those two men and that one
woman gave them. Ichabod fought like a roused mastiff, without a thought
of fear for himself. He struck vehemently, but a calm settled smile
was on his countenance. Sir Charleroy saw it and years after said,
recalling the incident, “amidst the greatest perils there’s a wondrous
peace to one who feels he is striking for God, close to the portals of
death and judgment.” The knight himself fenced with the rapidity of
lightning. Again and again by ones and twos and threes, the enemies
charged down upon him, but he fought with the prowess of a crusader, the
fire of a lover. Those parts had never before witnessed such splendid
swordsmanship. As the attack had been sudden, so was its ending. Two
Turks fell beneath Sir Charleroy’s weapon in quick succession, and a
third fell under his own horse, which was desperately wounded by a
sweeping blow from the knight. At the same, instant, almost, Ichabod and
one of the foemen, whom he was engaging, fell in significant silence,
while another struggled to drag Rizpah to his steed that he might make
her captive. Sir Charleroy, wounded and faint, dealt the latter miscreant
a staggering blow and the maiden, plucking a small dagger from the folds
of her garment, finished with a single thrust her captor’s earthly career.

Those of the marauders that were able, in fright took flight, wheeling
away more quickly than they had come.

“Rizpah, wilt thou go to Ich—Huykos? I can’t,” softly called out Sir
Charleroy.

The maiden flew to the Jew’s side, but quickly started back, crying:
“Oh, knight, come quickly! He’s dead!” Just then, looking back, a sudden
horror fell upon her, for she saw Sir Charleroy half reclining against a
rock, bleeding and pale. Like lightning she thought: “Both dead; I alone;
home miles away; the Turks hovering near.”

But the thought of her own peril was only momentary, and after it there
came more rapidly than can be written the thought that one dear as her
life was dead, dead for her sake. Instantly, on feet that seemed winged,
she was at Sir Charleroy’s side. All her being merged into one great,
instant impulse to save her lover. Over him she bent, and with passionate
sorrow tried with her garments to staunch the flow of blood. In the