“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