Rizpah

“ Here for a time they abode. The number and variety of castles, temples, theaters and palaces in ruins, were sufficient to engage the attention of the travelers for many days. Rizpah was more cheerful than she was at Edrei, but yet restless to reach Bozrah, on which place her heart was set.
One day standing before an old Roman temple in Kunawat, Rizpah, somewhat interested by its well preserved Corinthian columns, and Sir Charleroy deeply engrossed in contemplation of an huge stone image, the former asks: “Has the knight recognized an old English [213] or a new Bashan love?” ”

“ Rizpah’s face wore a sneer as she again spoke: “How canst thou tell, Inexperience?”
“By acts. He goes about seeking poor people to clothe and feed, and he is their physician as well, and will take no pay.”
“Some Christian perverter, trying to seduce the unthinking by pretended service. Beware of such, Miriamne!”
“But healing the sick and setting people’s clocks right can’t do harm! ”

“ Which the more like Jezebel—Sir Charleroy or Rizpah?”
“But Rizpah was ardent to lay our love, and our children on her altar. Like the women who brought their jewels to Aaron to be transmuted into the golden calf! I could only protest, and I did.”
“Did not the men of Egypt and Israel first proclaim the worship of Apis? Were not the women merely following their lords? There are many women who defile their jewels because, with contempts that turn their hearts to ashes, their lords do not, as they should, wear both the wives and the jewels on strong and loyal hearts.” ”

“ Rizpah, a foreigner, of a nation subdued by kingly Saul; he a man, strong of mind, a king, hedged with a sort of divinity that in the minds of the simple ever hedges kings about; making their words and deeds seem always right and just. If women made the laws and customs there never would have been known on earth unclean polygamy, but ever instead thereof the union only, in holy wedlock, of two lives, mutually consecrated, serviceful and constant. Under wrong teaching and tyranny, a woman may do that which purer societies condemn, and yet retain a conscience white and clean before God. ”

“ 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 ”

“ When the last clause was finished, Miriamne cast a glance at the huge painting on the wall.
“I understand in part; that is Rizpah and her crucified children?”
“It is well, daughter. Behold her; this is motherhood of strongest type! Humanity is no where perfect, but of all the erring ones of life, I most believe in those, who, among many perversions of judgment and blemishes of character, have some one or more of lofty virtues. ”

“ The poor old woman of the poem is a sadder figure than Rizpah, for she is nearer, in time and place, to ourselves, and is represented as gathering up the bones of her only son, as they drop from the gibbet. ”

“ Now his twins have no nurses nor mourners, but Rizpah, and I’m racing to Gerash to see if I can find a soul to swell her wailings.”
The rider turned his horse and with a word, “Selamet,”—“peace,” was gone.
Miriamne had heard enough, and now, with redoubled vehemence, reöpened her arguments and appeals to her father to go to her home.
“I’ll not go into Rizpah’s house. I tell thee thou art inviting me into hell!”
Miriamne, in turn, replied: “There is good anywhere for those that earnestly seek it. Mohammed, they say, got his first inspiration in Bozrah, and he a Moslem, a crescent devotee!” ”

“ The gross and unbelieving, seeking to effect the apotheosis of human lust, have gone their ways reveling under the moonlight, and building their fanes in the groves which fade, while the believing and God-taught have walked in a covenant toward Him, ‘Who only hath immortality dwelling in light.’ Rizpah, some day that home group at Bethlehem, a father, mother, and child, surrounded by angels, overshadowed by God, will come to be thought the finest ideal of this life. ”

“ Sir Charleroy observed this circumstance, and casually remarked to Rizpah, as they bestowed their effects in one of the ancient domiciles:
“If ever I take to building, I’ll build abiding places for people, only. Such are the most lasting.” ”

“ When it travels along right lines, it quickens the one enriched by it to the noblest deeds. He whose name is Love came to earth through the Incarnation to show the splendor of human affection, working at its best in the kingdom of its finest displays—the home circle. The fate of Eden made men believe a lie, but Bethlehem refuted that lie for all time. Rizpah turned bitterly from the fiery, disappointing love she had experienced to stamp all loving, except parent love, a mockery. She had nursed her false creed, and suppressed her rebel heart by adoration of the wintry ideal of Gibeah. ”

“ The world has not yet interpreted Rizpah, the ‘burning coal,’ the beacon fire. Once I was frail, timorous, wavering, but devotion to that character has transformed me. When the world’s mothers look to her pattern, there will be a new order of motherhood; then look for heroic men and an heroic age! ”

“ Lucifer of the morning is the true emblem of most young love. It rises in maddening brightness, but fades out of sight very soon.’”
[190]
“Grim omen! We took Venus for our betrothal star; they say it is so bright at times that it casts a shadow. I feel its shadow now,” said the knight, meditating.
“Yes, shadows and shadows!” exclaimed Rizpah, with a flood of tears, and she swayed back and forth as she wept. She was driven by tempests of fear that made her ready to flee, and held by anchors of passionate loving that made her ready to brave all fears; therefore the swaying and weeping. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If one would find a monstrous cruelty, he must needs seek in human homes!” Then the speaker, pausing, bowed herself, and sat swaying from side to side, with her hands over her eyes. Miriamne, accustomed to such action on her mother’s part, and knowing it was best when she was in such moods to leave her to herself, withdrew quietly. Yet, Rizpah seemed not alone to herself, for her mind was peopled with ghostly forms from her gloomy past ”

“ The 1892 version, shown in the retrospective exhibition, is thus described in its catalogue: "A small figure of Clytie is seen on the right, kneeling on a stone building with arms outstretched towards the sun, which is setting behind a range of moorland hills."
In 1893 Hit, The Frigidarium, Farewell, Corinna of Tanagra, and Rizpah were exhibited at the Academy. Of these the most important is the last named. It illustrates the story of the two sons of Rizpah, by Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, who were slain by the Gideonites. ”

“ Just then the runner galloped up to the open door, reined his steed, and exclaimed: “Out of sight, out of mind! Death, like poverty, sifts our friends! Ye can hire mourners cheaper at Bozrah than at Gerash, and there are none to be had without coins! Gerash is distant. I had no coins, and was a fool to start, wise to return!” It was Laconic, and he was gone before any reply was given. Rizpah didn’t even lift up her head to notice his coming or going.
Miriamne was glad of the circumstance, for the runner gave her words with which to enter: “A daughter never forsakes.” ”

“ He heard in his vision the beatings as of mighty wings, rising to flight, and tried to turn and see who the departing one was. It seemed as if the spirit of Astarte-like countenance transfixed him with a gaze, so he could not turn; but a loneliness and darkness, almost palpable, came over him, and he knew it was the Madonna-faced prophet that had departed. The knight started up as if to rise, but, awakening, found Rizpah’s restraining arms about him.
“Stay,” she soothingly said. “Thou art feverish, and too weak to rise. Thou’lt be better presently ”

“ When men deify a fallen woman then look for a cataclysm of evils. Rizpah has seen little of the world, but this in time she’ll find true; the man whose cult or faith bends toward the libidinous is on the way to utter atheism. So these old-time free-lovers, like those of to-day, push out of the universe in their belief, the Great, Beautiful, First Cause. ”

“ As Miriamne read onward, Rizpah from time to time gave explanations:
“Dost perceive, daughter, that Jehovah, though not revengeful, is a God of recompenses?”
“He was the friend of the Gibeonites though they were not of his chosen people; because they had no other friend, I think,” said Miriamne.
“Yes, and He held all Israel responsible for what they were willing to let their blood-thirsty Saul perform. As he had been, so had been the people; they were guilty, and God needed to punish them. How just! Oh! God is sure to press men to a conclusion. Read what David said to the stranger Gibeonites;” ”

“ For many days Sir Charleroy lay wounded at the house of the Patriarch Harrimai, and she for whom he had periled his life was his constant attendant. He sorely needed her services, and all Gerash, the priest included, conceded the fitness of Rizpah’s rendering the aid she was able to render. The maiden was all willing to minister, and as she ministered her interest in the man deepened. When she began to look up to him as her teacher before the battle with Mamelukes, she began a sort of worship; when she saw him fighting to the death in her behalf, her worship became an engrossing adoration. ”

“ It is with her a sort of hysteria, a confession of secret terror, lest she and he grow apart in mind, and so come to part in body. Hence it is a giant cruelty on the part of a husband, sometimes, to enforce, or thrust forward, his size or his lordship. They may be facts, but God has set over against them as their equal that love which clings, stimulates and supplements, without which the finest man is far less than the half of the united twain. Sir Charleroy blundered along in his error; Rizpah tried to be happy and failed. ”

“ You know my wife was insanely fond of the woman (‘never could see anything in her myself) , and wanted me to pick up her old ‘rickshaw and coolies if they were to be got for love or money. Morbid sort of fancy I call it; but I’ve got to do what the Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all four of the men—they were brothers—died of cholera on the way to Hardwar, poor devils, and the ‘rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. ‘Told me he never used a dead Memsahib’s ‘rickshaw. ”

“ Rizal devoted himself particularly to the analysis of the sentiments with which the white and the colored races mutually regard each other. No one was so well qualified as he to study this question, which is of such importance to folk-psychology, for he was of himself of a colored race, had lived among his fellow-countrymen at his own home as well as among the whites, those of mixed bloods, and other classes at Manila, and had besides come to know Hong-Kong, Japan, Europe, and the United States and that in a thorough way and not as a mere tourist. ”

“ It has become a habit among some writers and speakers to look upon Rizal as a kind of superman, a creature of abnormal gifts, a brilliant exception to the common endowment of the Filipino. Some have described him as a bright, strange meteor flashing against a background of Malayan incapacity.18 As this narrative of a wonderful life unfolds it will probably show that the man thus pedestaled was only human and that the secret of his great works, enduring influence and pre-eminence in so many walks was nothing mysterious but plainly understandable. ”

“ The doctora wore a silk gown, embroidered with flowers, and on her hat, a large parrot half crushed among trimmings of red and blue ribbons. The dust of the road had mingled with the rice powder on her cheeks, strongly accentuating her wrinkles. She was leaning on the arm of her lame husband.
“I have the pleasure to present to you our cousin, Don Alfonso Linares de Espadaña,” said Doña Victorina, pointing toward the young man. “The gentleman is a god-son of a relative of Father Dámaso, and is private secretary to all the ministers.” ”

“ Ben-Zayb, the journalist with the countenance of a friar, was disputing with a young friar who in turn had the countenance of an artilleryman. Both were shouting, gesticulating, waving their arms, spreading out their hands, [6] stamping their feet, talking of levels, fish-corrals, the San Mateo River,2 of cascos, of Indians, and so on, to the great satisfaction of their listeners and the undisguised disgust of an elderly Franciscan, remarkably thin and withered, and a handsome Dominican about whose lips flitted constantly a scornful smile. ”

“ Crispin pulled, and heard a feeble plaint, quickly silenced by a thunder crash. “If we were only home with mama,” he mourned, “I shouldn’t be afraid.”
The other did not answer. He watched the candle melt, and seemed thoughtful.
“At least, no one there would call me a thief; mama would not have it. If she knew they had beaten me——” The elder gave the great cord a sharp pull; a deep, sonorous tone trembled out.
“Pay what they say I stole! Pay it, brother!”
“Are you mad, Crispin? Mama would have nothing to eat; they say you stole two onces, and two onces make thirty-two pesos.” ”