Jael

“ Why, Jael, they sell the land there for half-a-crown an acre, and that will make four hundred acres. Farmer Marriage hasn’t got one so big as that, and he’s churchwarden and guardian, and he rents his from the squire; we shall own ours. By George! we shall be grand folks! That will be happiness. No soldiering for me, and no-mother-in-lawing—no, I mean step-mothering for you.’
Jael put up her hand to her brow, then over her lips which were trembling, but the hand trembled also; she stayed it by resting her elbow in the hollow of the other hand crossed before her. ”

“ Julia began to fidget.
‘Jerry,’ she said in a low voice, but with some sharpness in it, although so low—like a very small pocket-knife blade, ‘Jerry, I never properly understood about you and that—that girl Jael. What was that story?’
‘I’m glad you’ve mentioned it,’ said Jeremiah, clearing his throat. ‘Drat it! how the fog fills one’s lungs. I’m glad you’ve mentioned it, because I can explain the whole matter so easy. Poor thing! poor thing! ”

“ His hand was hot, she felt his pulses beating, she tried to withdraw her fingers, but he would not allow her.
‘No, no, Jael,’ he said, ‘hand in hand we shall go through life together. You have no one else to look after you and care for you and love you. ”

“ His arms were extended clasping the sides of the door, and he was on one knee, the other foot was within the little cabin.
She knelt before him, she clasped her hands and laid them on her bosom.
‘Jerry,’ she said, ‘you mean fairly, truly, honestly by me?’
‘My dear Jael,’ he replied, ‘of course I do. You must trust me.’
‘Trust you,’ she said; ‘I have no one else to trust. I loved my father, and he has turned against me; he does not love me. ”

“ Then Jeremiah Mustard came to the entrance and crept in a little way, kneeling on one knee, stooping, and holding the sides of the hatch.
‘How are you, Jael? You do not mind the sea?’
‘No, Jerry.’
‘Glad to be away from Mrs Bagg, eh? Glad to have turned your back on wretchedness and set your face towards prosperity, eh?’
‘I don’t know that I am glad,’ she said simply, then raised her face from her hand, and laid her hands folded on the planks. Her right cheek was crimson as a carnation, through the pressure of her hand, but the other was very pale. ‘I am not glad, I am not happy at all. ”

“ Jael stood up, and flushed a dark red. She knew to what the widow alluded.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Mrs Bagg, ‘that this poor dear man here’—she waved her spoon towards Mr Tapp—‘has been vexed and worried out of his life, by having to deal with idiots as can’t keep out of the way of octopuses. Any one with a grain of sense would steer clear of them brutes, but some run into their arms and offer themselves to be swallowed. ”

“ When her father came home, would he be more pitiful than the woman who now ruled in his house? Would he be able to withstand her will, alter her decision?
Then Jael laughed and said, ‘I am to be homeless. I will go and see the home Jeremiah has prepared for his Julia;’ and she walked across the bridge. She walked slowly now, with her head down, and her arms folded on her breast. Her dark eyes, hard as polished stones, looked before her at the rails, and marked each sleeper through the fog, as she came to it, on which she was to plant her foot. ”

“ The chestnut horse was too old, unaccustomed to run, too used to the whip, and too heavily taxed with the coals to run far and run fast. The carter was after him, shouting, and the chestnut was speedily brought to a standstill. Then with curses the fellow scrambled up on the shaft and saw that Jael had fallen back among the coal sacks and was unconscious. ”

“ Jael was impulsive, hot and capricious. Sometimes she quarrelled with Jeremiah, as—it must be confessed—she quarrelled with her father, and as—but that was allowable—she quarrelled with her gull.
It is a curious fact that man—and woman also—is never contented with what he has, but always wishes for what he has not; grumbles at what is, and desires what is not; and pants with unutterable longing for what cannot be. The artist who paints exquisitely sulks over his pictures and craves to be a musician, and curses his folly when he was a boy in not practising his fingers on the piano ”

“ Then a kind lady who had seen her in the ward gave her an old gown of her own, and a dark bonnet, for her straw hat was battered and torn, and her cotton dress was stained with the seawater and coal grime past use; she gave her also a shawl for her shoulders, and spoiled her kindness, not intentionally, by giving Jael much moral advice and earnest adjuration, believing her to be what she was not. This angered Jael, and she refused the garments, but then considered that the hospital visitor was not to blame in misreading her story. Jael could not tell her the truth, she was too proud. ”

“ She was content to cross to Limehouse, and through Poplar, to reach the road by Barking to Chelmsford.
But Jael did not get far along this road at once. The exposure to rain, to sea-water and cold, the distress of her mind, her disappointment, and her wrath at the insult offered her by the man to whom she had clung, combined to break down her robust health. She knew that she was going to be ill, she felt that fever had hold of her, and she fought against it. She walked on, determined not to yield. ”

“ Nigh on upset the cart, she did.’
‘Drunk,’ said the relieving officer. ‘We’ll see to her! We’ll make her dance! We’ll bring her to her senses! Come along, you! Ain’t you ashamed of yourself wallowing in the coals that fashion? Ugh! You old Jezebel.’
‘She’s quite young—not above nineteen, and un-common pretty,’ said the carter.
‘Is she so?’ asked the officer; then in a soft and winning tone to Jael, ‘Come, my pretty. Hop up, my duck! ”

“ The girl’s name was Jael, and she came by it in this way: When Mrs Tapp presented her husband with a daughter, ‘The finest and biggest she-baby as ever was or ought to be,’ said her intimate friend, Mrs Bagg, who nursed her. Mrs Tapp thought she had done enough for Shamgar and the world, and shrank from the rearing of the finest and biggest she-baby into a big and masculine girl, so she gave her husband and baby and nurse the slip, and left them to make the best of life without her. ”

“ She has skilfully blended the bloodthirsty, gloating outcries of Deborah’s Song with the idyllic lyrics of Solomon’s Songs, and has presented in Jael a composite type, a mixture of the savage tent-woman, of the passionate yet gentle Shulamite, and of the eternal jealous female. The result, as far as the creation of an atmosphere goes, is a positive success. ”

“ When the mind can do this, it rapidly recovers fibre and elasticity, but if it goes on working, tossing, grasping, beating itself, then it takes a long time for renewal. The body may gain its losses, but the mind does not keep pace with it, and the result is a feeble flight like that of the bird with lopped wing.
Jael did not at all know how her father would receive her. She reproached herself for having run away. She had been angry with Mrs Bagg, but had not her father a right to bring the widow into the house? She, Jael, had not made him as comfortable as might be. ”

“ She had removed her gown and wore her stays.
‘That I should have lived to see this!’ said Mrs Bagg. ‘What creatures men—I mean human beings—be. How they rises to emergencies, and when put to their mettles how their talents appear. That besom does beautifully, doesn’t it, Jael?’
Jael remained in a corner; she crouched, with her elbows on her knees, looking sullenly at the floor in front of her. No appeal of Mrs Bagg could induce her to look up and admire the cap on the extemporised stand. The widow, however, was content to talk without eliciting answers ”

“ He came near to where she was, but he did not see her. The flashing of the lightning dazzled the eyes. He saw only what was within the radius of the light from his lantern. He stood still. There were three great balks rose out of the marsh to the roadway, serving as piers for the single line of rail, and these were braced and girded with other beams a very little way above the ground.
‘One—two,’ said Mr Shamgar Tapp.
Jael heard his words. The wind set inwards. She was hidden behind the third balk.
Then her father set down the lantern and turned up the turf with his spade. ”

“ Look at his hands, they are soft as a girl’s. I tell you he don’t like work. He likes to be in the ‘Anchor,’ smoking and drinking, and—’ with concentrated wrath—‘it’s the likes of he as can go all round the globe and see niggers, and rub them and see if it be burnt cork or not, and I am forced to stay at home. Talk of slaves, do you?—get along.’
‘I thought, father,’ said Jael, ‘that if I married Jeremiah he’d be useful to you. He might attend to the bridge, and pilot the trains over, and allow you sometimes to get away.’
‘Indeed! ”

“ Shamgar looked up at the woman, then at his daughter.
‘I’ve heard,’ said Mrs Bagg, ‘of living tangles, a sort of fish with two great eyes and a lot of long arms, and its head and stomach all in one. And I’ve heard,’ she continued, looking hard at Jael, ‘that when that same creature gets its arms about a human being, then it’s a bad look-out for that same. And I know that there be human octopuses too, that likes to throw their arms round girl’s necks, and then I pity the girl, that’s all. ”

“ Deary life! I know what shall be done. Run, Jael, down stairs, and fetch a broom up here, and I’ll plant the broom up between the backs of two chairs set ag’in one another, and the cap a-top. It’ll do. Necessity is the mother of invention.’
‘Sack o’ dew!’ exclaimed Mrs Bagg, when she had provided herself with a besom and placed it in the required position, and adjusted her cap on the top, and brought down the ribbons on each side evenly, and had walked round it admiringly, holding the candle. ”

“ I will vex you no more,’ said Jael, hardly controlling herself, and she went out of the door.
Mr Tapp thought he had gone too far, spoken too strongly, and he half rose from his seat.
‘You let her alone,’ said Mrs Bagg.
‘Hard words break no bones. You’ve given her a pill that will set her to rights. I understand female nature. Haven’t I got it myself? If a person has it and has had it these forty—I mean thirty-five years, experiencing of it and experimentalising on it day and night, winter and summer, one must be a fool not to understand it. It will do her good. Trust me. ”

“ Is there any man here? that thou shalt say: No.' 21Then Jael Heber's wife took a tent-pin, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the pin into his temples, and it pierced through into the ground; for he was in a deep sleep; so he swooned and died. 22And, behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said unto him: 'Come, and I will show thee the man whom thou seekest.' And he came unto her; and, behold, Sisera lay dead, and the tent-pin was in his temples. 23So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the children of Israel. ”

“ Doesn’t reason, and the light of nature, and daily observation show that the sun browns the skin, and doesn’t blacken? The sun black a man’s skin as a shoe-boy blacks a boot!—get along!’
The bridge was closed, the lines united.
‘Life is made up of contrarinesses,’ said Tapp; ‘else why should I have been left a widower with that rollicking she-baby—that Jael to bring up. Lord! what a bother I had with her, and spoon-feeding and teething, and now—she’ll be running after all the boys. That’s the way with gals. Then there’s her money, that is, her mother’s money ”

“ I will put the bread in my lips, and you shall peck and try to take it—without flying, and I without striking. I will hold my other hand behind my back. No! Tired of playing? Very well. I bear no malice; let us kiss and be chums.’ She had put her right hand behind her, and had raised the left, on the wrist of which sat the gull, expanding and closing its wings, balancing itself as she changed her position. All at once Jael’s right hand was caught, a hand was thrust under her chin, her face was turned up, and a kiss pressed on her lips. ”

“ An idle girl was Jael, brought up to no particular work. She did, indeed, in a fashion, manage her father’s house, but that house was very small, and his demands not great. The major portion of her day was spent racing over the marshes, playing with the gull, sometimes bathing in the ‘fleet,’ where there was a ‘hard’ or gravelly bed, sometimes rowing, and when at home sometimes quarrelling with her father.
He was a headstrong man, and she was a headstrong girl. He a man full of passion and will ”

“ Then Jael left the door at which she had vainly battered and cried, and leaped on to the line, and ran forward towards the coming eye of ruby fire, towards that screaming monster—by no other means could it be arrested, by no other means those lives be saved.
* * * ‘Jerry,’ said Julia, standing beside her husband on the engine, ‘I suppose it is all right with the bridge?’
‘Of course it is,’ answered he. ‘How could it be otherwise? No mortal ship would venture up in such a fog as this, and without a ship is passing, the bridge is never opened. In a few minutes we shall be home—Then—Halloo! ”

“ Explanatory of this is the passage in Judges v. 27, where, in the Song of Deborah, it is said of Jael, "He bowed between her feet, he fell, he lay down." That which any one has between his feet, is accordingly his territory on which he moves, that within his reach. In the latter passage the prose expression would have been, "beside her," and in the passage under consideration, "from him." [8]
Sceptre and lawgiver shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come. Here everything depends upon fixing the derivation and signification of this word. ”