An Interpretation of David and Jonathan’s Friendship
Jonathan Y. Rowe
NEW YORK • LONDON • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury T&T Clark
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
175 Fifth Avenue 50 Bedford Square New York London
NY 10010 WC1B 3DP
USA UK
www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2012
© Jonathan Y. Rowe, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
eISBN: 978-0-5673-0616-6
Typeset by Forthcoming Publications Ltd (www.forthpub.com)
For Mark
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book explores the biblical story of David and Jonathan’s friendship in the context of their family relations. The questions I ask about the narrative arose during many years living away from my native England. Perhaps this was only natural, for while even a casual reader of the Bible can echo L. P. Hartley’s quip that “the past is a different country: they do things differently there,” personal experience of cultural dislocation (and adaptation) obliges readers to face the issue head on. Living in Uganda, Pakistan and Spain helped me realize that not only is the Old Testament a “strange land”—they do things differently, but also that my suppositions would have been quite foreign to its original recipients. Sons or Lovers, therefore, attempts to sensitize contemporary readers to these differences. I do not suppose to “bridge the gap,” as if the dichotomy could be overcome or collapsed, but instead point to ways in which the ancient texts might be understood anew: my aim is “interpretative understanding.”
Special thanks are owed to my family for their support and forbearance during the years that it has taken for this book to reach publication. I am most grateful, also, to readers of various versions of the draft manuscript who made perceptive comments that have sharpened my argument considerably: Mario Aguilar, Dennis Byler, Richard Cleaves, Nathan MacDonald, Chris Wright, and an especially diligent anonymous reviewer for T&T Clark International. The usual disclaimers apply.
Chapter 1 contains some material, appropriately revised, that was rst published in my Michal’s Moral Dilemma: A Literary, Anthropological and Ethical Interpretation (New York: T&T Clark International, 2011). At other points I have also re-utilized some of my article “Is David Really David’s ‘Wife’? A Response to Yaron Peleg,” JSOT 34 (2009): 183–93. The table entitled “The Amiable Relations of Kinship and Friendship” in this book was originally published by Cambridge University Press in Julian Pitt-Rivers, “The Kith and the Kin,” in The Character of Kinship (ed. J. Goody; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 96. I am grateful to the copyright holders for the relevant permissions.
Acknowledgments
Sons or Lovers is dedicated to Mark who has been a friend since our time together at university. As a minister in the Church of England he is engaged daily with the sort of messy conundrums re ected in the David—Jonathan narrative and it would be gratifying if the discussion within these pages excited not only scholarly debate but wider interest in the complex issues surrounding the ethics of family and friendship.
ABBREVIATIONS
AA American Anthropologist
AAASP American Anthropological Association Special Publication
AB Anchor Bible
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary
ABRL Anchor Bible Reference Library
ACCS Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
AE American Ethnologist
AES Archives européennes de sociologie
AJA Australian Journal of Anthropology
AJEC Anthropological Journal on European Cultures
ANET Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts
ARA Annual Review of Anthropology
AQ Anthropological Quarterly
ASAOSP Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Special Publications
ASR American Sociological Review
BA Biblical Archaeology
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BCT The Bible and Critical Theory
BibInt Biblical Interpretation
BIS Biblical Interpretation Series
BJS British Journal of Sociology
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BMW Bible in the Modern World
BO Berit Olam: Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry
BS The Biblical Seminar
BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
BT The Bible Translator
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
CA Cultural Anthropology
CAT Commentaire de l’Ancien Testament
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CBR Currents in Biblical Research
CCR Cross-Cultural Research
CH Hammurabi Code
CS Current Sociology
CSSA Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology
CSSH Comparative Studies in Society and History
Abbreviations
DA Dialectical Anthropology
DEFM Diccionario de Ética y de Filosofía Moral
DJD Discoveries in the Judean Desert
EJST European Journal of Social Theory
EN Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
EstBib Estudios Bíblicos
FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament
FOTL Forms of Old Testament Literature
GBS Guides to Biblical Scholarship
GS Gender & Society
HBM Hebrew Bible Monographs
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
ICC International Critical Commentary
IEES International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology
Int. Interpretation
ISBE International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Edited by G. Bromiley
ISBL Indiana studies in biblical literature
J. Afr. Hist. The Journal of African History
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JAR Journal of Anthropological Research
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JBS Jerusalem Biblical Studies
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JP Journal of Philosophy
JR Journal of Religion
JRAI Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
JSPR Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament
LHBOTS Library of Hebrew Bible Old Testament Studies
LXX Septuagint
LXXB Codex Vaticanus of LXX
MLR Michigan Law Review
MM Men and Masculinities
MT Masoretic text
NAC The New American Commentary
NIBC New International Bible Commentary
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
NIDNTT New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology
NIDOTTE New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NS New Series
NSEP Newfoundland Social and Economic Papers
OBT Overtures to Biblical Theology
Abbreviations
OTE Old Testament Essays
OTL Old Testament Library
OTS Old Testament Studies
PBM Paternoster Biblical Monographs
PT Presencia Teológica
RI Revista de Indias
SA Social Anthropology
SASS Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
SBTS Sources for Biblical and Theological Study
SHBC Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary
SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
SM Série Morales
SNTSMS Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series
SOTSMS Society of Old Testament Studies Monograph Series
SR Social Research
SS Semeia Studies
SSH Social Science History
SSN Studia Semitica Neerlandica
STI Studies in Theological Interpretation
TCS Theory, Culture, Society
TDOT TheologicalDictionary of the Old Testament
TOTC Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries
TynBul Tyndale Bulletin
UBT Understanding Biblical Themes
UCOP University of Cambridge Oriental Publications
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Vetus Testamentum Supplement Series
Vulg. Vulgate
WTJ Westminster Theological Journal
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
INTRODUCTION
Never did Marriage uch true Union nd, Or mens de ires with o glad violence bind.
—Abraham Cowley, Davideis1
Friend or foe? For or against? These are questions that many of us ask, perhaps subconsciously, almost daily. If someone is “on our side” they may give us a little more time, listen a little more attentively, perhaps perform some favour or offer to do something that is inconvenient to themselves. Of course, family members may do all this, one of the reasons why many divide the world into “family” and “non-family,” the latter often a cipher for “enemies.” But this distinction is inadequate because there are people who are not family yet who masquerade as such and, regrettably, family members who sometimes take their stand against us. Perhaps because the world is not a place where xed categories are particularly useful people try to navigate its choppy waters with as many helps as possible. To family and enemies we add “friends,” people who are not related but who do not seek our undoing. But here an important and sometimes dif cult question arises: If it is necessary to choose, should one prefer family or friends? And what grounds could we possibly have for making this choice other than egoistic self-interest (which seems to be incompatible with the very idea of friendship and family life)? This book examines these questions as they feature in the fascinating and emotive Bible story of Jonathan and David’s friendship. It is a riveting tale, perhaps because we can empathize with the two men as they attempt to negotiate the knotted tangle of their relationships with both family and friends.
The story of Jonathan and David has been retold many times down the centuries. Each retelling, however, is necessarily an interpretation or translation of the original. The Italian aphorism “traduttore traditore” accuses translators of betrayal, not because the intention is willfully to
1. A. Cowley, Davideis (London: Henry Herringman, 1681), 48 (emphasis and spelling original).
distort but simply because each interpreter translates what he or she reads into a linguistically or culturally distinct idiom. A good example is one of the earliest interpreters of the Jonathan and David narrative, the Jewish historian Josephus, who highlights David’s supposed virtue even though authorial comments along this line are conspicuously absent from 1 Samuel. It is obvious from Josephus’ embellishments that he wrote his Antiquities for a particular purpose, but the retelling is not to be dismissed simply because he had a particular axe to grind. A great variety of constructions may be placed upon the characters’ numerous interactions; and sometimes the texts themselves are deliciously ambiguous.2
Some interpretations purport simply to retell the story in terms readily understood by their contemporaries. A modern example might be Francine Rivers’ novella The Prince, which is replete with observations about characters’ psychological motivations typical of the genre.3 Yet works like Stefan Heym’s The King David Report highlight how the extant text is an “authorized version”: “The One and Only True and Authoritative, Historically Correct and Of cially Approved Report on the Amazing Rise, God-fearing Life, Heroic Deeds, and Wonderful Achievements of David the Son of Jesse, King of Judah for Seven Years and of Both Judah and Israel for Thirty-three, Chosen of God, and Father of King Solomon.”4 Heym’s novel invites readers to consider how the original redactor might have selected and edited his sources, not only because of his commission but also his personal circumstances. Similar challenges to “straightforward” interpretations have come from minority or marginalized perspectives. Notable among these in recent years have been “queer” readings positing a homosexual relationship between Jonathan and David, or even a “love triangle” involving Saul.5 What is one to
2. On ambiguity in these texts, see P. Miscall, The Workings of Old Testament Narrative (SS; Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico: Scholars Press, 1983), 100–27.
3. F. Rivers, The Prince: A Novela (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 2005).
4. S. Heym, The King David Report (London: Abacus, 1972), 9 (without original emphasis).
5. See, for example, David Jobling, 1 Samuel (BO; Collegeville: Liturgical, 1998), 161–64; Susan Ackerman, When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Silvia Schroer and Thomas Staubli, “Saul, David and Jonathan—The Story of a Triangle? A Contribution to the Issue of Homosexuality in the First Testament,” in Samuel and Kings: A Feminist Companion to the Bible (ed. A. Brenner; 2d series; Shef eld: Shef eld Academic, 2000), 22–36. For a critique of Schroer and Staubli see inter alia Markus Zehnder, “Observations on the Relationship Between David and Jonathan and the Debate on Homosexuality,” WTJ 69 (2007): 127–74. It is important to note that “queer” readings do not equate to those positing same-sex erotic relationships even if this is the contention of the works cited here.
make of these interpretations? They cannot be ruled out of court on the basis that one does not like them, or that they are new, or even that they are somehow invalid because of the presuppositions of their advocates. To do so would be to ignore the fact that ideological freight is carried by all interpreters, even those who belong to hallowed traditions—indeed, if liberation theology has taught us anything, perhaps we should say especially by such “traditionalists.” Yet while there is no neutral standpoint from which we can judge interpretations this does not mean all readings are equally good interpretations of the text. 6 People who read the David and Jonathan stories from differing cultural backgrounds or holding divergent convictions can be expected to produce distinct interpretations. If they are to be faithful to the narrative, however, they must not ride roughshod over it but account for what it says and the way in which it is said. To determine which interpretations are more faithful there is only one test: each must be compared with the original text. Naturally, interpreters’ interests will affect this process and so there is no reason why any particular interpretation should be ruled out a priori, yet exegetes must continually return to the text in order to test and clarify their understandings. There are those who argue that desiring such faithfulness blinds the interpreter to the coercive nature of the Bible and so reject such a posture in favour of reading “against the grain,” but I do not count myself among such sceptics and this book attempts to present an interpretation of Jonathan and David’s friendship faithful to the original.7
Even this aim, however, is not entirely uncomplicated given the differences between the Masoretic text, Qumran fragments and Septuagint. There is something to be said for simply deciding which version one wishes to interpret and then proceeding to do so, a reading strategy that possesses the advantage of not needing to defend every variant followed. This does not seem to me to be entirely satisfactory, though, since it ignores the possibility that the original narrative—if there was an original—cannot be discerned using only one of the versions now available. Nevertheless, this book is concerned with ethical issues as they appear in the text and not principally with textual criticism, so such matters will be discussed only where interpretative questions are at stake, and usually in
6. See D. J. A. Clines, “Michal Observed: An Introduction to Reading Her Story,” in Telling Queen Michal’s Story: An Experiment in Comparative Interpretation (ed. D. J. A. Clines and T. C. Eskenazi; JSOTSup 119; Shef eld: Shef eld Academic, 1991), 24–63 (29).
7. Some have argued that this strategy is required by the text itself, see Richard Briggs, The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretative Virtue (STI; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010).
the footnotes. With this caveat, we will examine the “ nal form” of the Masoretic text of 1 and 2 Samuel rather than putative sources.8 One consequence of this decision is that when referring to matters of intertextuality (within the books of Samuel and the wider canon) we will not investigate whether a particular connection between texts is an allusion intended by the author, and thus dependent upon a particular date of composition, or an echo discernible by attentive readers of the nal text. This distinction is an important one, yet while questions of literary dependence are interesting they do not press hard upon readers of the canonical text even when later additions to the proto-text “stick out” or “disturb” the narrative ow,9 and we shall leave them largely to one side in this study.
Another matter is the scope of the text that I denominate the “David–Jonathan narrative.” While a number of sources were utilized in the composition of the original scrolls, we shall not seek to identify them, nor examine how they t into a longer whole, whether the latter be conceived as the “History of David’s Rise,” the Deuteronomistic History, or the Primary History (Genesis to 2 Kings). The “David–Jonathan narrative,” therefore, is used of the biblical text from 1 Sam 14:1 to 2 Sam 1:27 for ease of reference and not to indicate any particular view of the text’s provenance.10
Reading the Old Testament can produce a sort of “culture shock.” Perusing the books of Samuel, for example, it is at once obvious that Jonathan, David and Saul hail from a very different society to that of many readers today. Perhaps the cultural distance is particularly acute for those from twenty- rst-century Western nations—probably the majority of this book’s readers—although many others nd the social mores evident in the text decidedly strange. Even when the actions and attitudes of the protagonists do not seem immoral, they are occasionally so far removed from our own experiences that they remain inexplicable, and the motivations of the characters, in so far as these may be discerned, opaque. What are we to make, for example, of the numerous examples of oath taking, so central to the narrative’s ow? Or of Jonathan giving his robe to David? Or of Saul charging his son with having shamed his mother? Or even of the striking of a covenant between David and
8. Pace, for example, B. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
9. See G. Andersson, Untamable Texts: Literary Studies and Narrative Theory in the Books of Samuel (LHBOTS 514; London: T&T Clark International, 2009), 14.
10. See also A. Heacock, Jonathan Loved David: Manly Love in the Bible and the Hermeneutics of Sex (BMW 22; Shef eld: Shef eld Phoenix, 2011), 1 n.1.
Jonathan, the core ritual of their friendship? It seems that we are in a strange land and, as in any place where people do things differently, we can misread the cultural clues. Yet the clues are there: we simply have to learn to recognize them.
To understand the Jonathan and David stories on their own terms we need a guide to help us settle into the “culture” of biblical Israel. In recent decades the academic discipline of anthropology has been employed by a number of exegetes as such an aid, since it has been found that by learning from a discipline that seeks to understand contemporary societies, some of which are ostensibly similar to that of ancient Israel in terms of social organization, we can see things in the Bible that we do not observe if we simply assume modern Western patterns of living. Sons or Lovers stands in this social-scienti c stream of interpretation, seeking to bring the Old Testament and anthropology into conversation.
A recent study by Gary Stansell is one of the few interpretations of Jonathan and David’s relationship that uses the anthropology of friendship to elucidate the narrative.11 Stansell observes that although friendship appears to be ubiquitous, what “friend” signi es changes according to the society in which the term is used.12 In an attempt to avoid anachronism and ethnocentrism he outlines how friendship has been theorized in several major schools of thought before presenting a “heuristic model” of friendship that he uses to categorize seven types of friends: inalienable, exclusive, close, institutionalized, patron–client, casual and expedient.13 Stansell then draws upon his heuristic model of friendship to pose questions to the David–Jonathan narratives enquiring into, for example, whether the men’s relationship was symmetrical or asymmetrical, the signi cance of their covenant making, gifts and mutual oath taking, how their friendship related to kinship relations, and whether the analogy of patron–client is helpful. He concludes that Jonathan and David seem to exhibit an “inalienable friendship” in which Jonathan takes the initiative.14
By employing social-science to facilitate his interpretation Stansell uncovers much that has gone unnoticed by previous commentators. Although I would reach different conclusions at various points and, as explained in the next chapter, we wi ll travel a different road to Stansell
11. Gary Stansell, “David and His Friends: Social-Scienti c Perspectives on the David–Jonathan Friendship,” BTB 41 (2011): 115–31.
12. See ibid., 116.
13. See ibid., 119.
14. See ibid., 129.
when it comes to utilizing anthropology, his interpretation is commendable for its clear exposition of the core issues surrounding David and Jonathan’s friendship. Stansell is particularly insightful when he observes that friendship causes problems in situations where delity to a particular individual clashes with other aspirations: when friendship “stands in the way”15 of another objective. Understanding these con icts is essential for a proper comprehension of the narrative’s dynamic, for it is the existence of multiple obligations and the con ict between them that gives the David–Jonathan narratives their piquancy. Interpreters need to comprehend not only that particular things seem to clash, but also the nature of these things themselves. This is clear in Jonathan’s disclosure of family secrets to David and Saul’s violent reaction. Stansell asserts that the “deception hardly seems to us a moral evil for it is supposed to save a life. But from Saul’s perspective and the solidarity of kinship requirements, Jonathan appears to be a traitor.”16 There are three aspects of these two sentences that are especially important for this book’s interpretation. The rst is that the narrative contains several features to which moral import might be attached. In this particular case, Stansell identi es deception, life, solidarity and family. In the language of ethics these are termed “goods” or, because one ought to seek or protect them, moral goods.17 An essential interpretative task, therefore, is to identify the moral goods in view within the narratives. This is complicated by the cultural distance between ancient and modern societies, meaning readers need to nd adequate tools to assist in the interpretative task. Second, the perspective from which one views the matter determines how the achievement or otherwise of these goods is evaluated. In this instance it is from Saul’s perspective that Jonathan’s actions are viewed, but Saul’s perception will have been shared by others, including the narrative’s ancient implied readers. It will become clear that biblical authors are attentive to which of their characters perceive situations in culturally accepted ways, and then use these perceptions when constructing their narrative. Third, the achievement of particular moral goods in contradistinction to others is evaluated. Stansell argues that “Jonathan appears to be a traitor.” Although we will contest the description
15. Ibid., 125.
16. Ibid., 126.
17. On “moral goods” in Old Testament ethics, see J. Y. Rowe, Michal’s Moral Dilemma: A Literary, Anthropological and Ethical Interpretation (LHBOTS 533; New York: T&T Clark International, 2011), 27–35. I follow a customary distinction between “ethics” and “morality” (and their variants): “morality” is actual behaviour and standards; “ethics” is re ection about these practices.
“traitor,” Jonathan’s actions are certainly appraised and, in this particular context and from this particular perspective, appraised negatively. In the next chapter we will examine in more detail how anthropology can stimulate new interpretations of the David–Jonathan story, but Stansell’s article signals the promise of social-scenti c approaches like that adopted in this book.
We turn now to the observation that because the David–Jonathan narrative is a literary artifact it must be read . Over the last few decades many scholars have used literary theory to elucidate how biblical narratives can be understood and to expose the theoretical issues behind the reading strategies they propose.18 Interest in how narrative can inform ethical re ection has been less widespread, although there is increasing attention to this issue, too.19 While stories can exemplify virtues or principles, if interpreters seek only to abstract general rules they can overlook what Bruce Birch terms “the ambiguities of righteousness.”20 Indeed, it does not take a reader long to appreciate that the Bible describes “a world where there are few perfect saints and few unredeemable sinners: most of its heroes and heroines have both virtues and vices, they mix obedience and unbelief.”21 This is precisely why biblical narratives were (and are) valuable for moral education. Because the “stories re ect all the ambiguities and complexities of human experience and the struggle to nd and live out faith relationships to God in the midst of life”22 readers have to re ect deeply rather than consume the moral lesson and dispose with the narrative wrapper. Gordon Wenham argues that although this complexity militates against mundane or naïve readings, the Old Testament does exhibit “an ethical point of view” that is commended by
18. See, e.g., R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic, 1981); M. Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (3d ed.; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); S. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible (JSOTSup 70; Shef eld: Almond, 1989); D. Gunn and D. Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
19. See, e.g., M. Mills, Biblical Morality: Moral Perspectives in Old Testament Narratives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001); R. Parry, Old Testament Story and Christian Ethics: The Rape of Dinah as a Case Study (PBM; Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2004); Rowe, Michal’s Moral Dilemma; G. J. Wenham, Story as Torah: Reading the Old Testament Ethically (OTS; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000).
20. B. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and the Christian Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 64.
21. Wenham, Story as Torah, 15.
22. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down, 53.
authors through an omniscient narrator.23 Wenham’s approach is “monologic” in the terms employed by Mikhail Bakhtin, a twentieth-century Russian literary philosopher whose ideas have enjoyed considerable currency in biblical and theological studies since the 1980s. One Hebrew Bible scholar in particular has studied the David–Jonathan narratives through the lens of Bakhtin’s dialogism.24 In her article “Experiential Learning: The Construction of Jonathan in the Narrative of Saul and David,” Barbara Green utilizes Bakhtin’s theory of dialogic utterances carefully to examine the interweaving sayings and actions in 1 Sam 20.25 Bakhtin maintained that what people say is not autonomous but intimately connected to others’ orations. Meaning, therefore, is generated in the interaction of people’s “utterances.” An “utterance” does not refer simply to a sentence but, as Bakhtin scholars Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist explain, is “the simultaneity of what is actually said and what is assumed but not spoken.”26 Green examines the utterances of David, Jonathan and Saul in some detail, showing how the men’s statements and actions relate to preceding utterances in the story. Although there is very little intervention from the narrator, Green’s attention to the “tiny utterance genre”27 means she is able to discern how the author has constructed his tale with a particular message.
While some of Green’s interpretative conclusions might be queried, her use of Bakhtin’s dialogism is promising and in the rst part of Chapter 1 I explain how Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism can aid interpretation of the David–Jonathan narratives. Because utterances are linked to the narrative “voice” of each character they are contextual. It was suggested above that social-science can be employed to assist that part of the exegetical task concerned with interpreting “cultural context.” Methodological questions relating to this task, though, are hotly contested and it is necessary to explain the interpretative approach to be adopted, so in the second section of the chapter I discuss why “practice theory” is a particularly fruitful way of holding “individual agency” and “cultural context” in creative tension, especially when the ubiquitous
23. See Wenham, Story as Torah.
24. B. Green, Mikhail Bakhtin and Biblical Scholarship: An Introduction (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2000), and How Are the Mighty Fallen? A Dialogical Study of King Saul in 1 Samuel (JSOTSup 365; Shef eld: Shef eld Academic, 2003).
25. B. Green, “Experiential Learning: The Construction of Jonathan in the Narrative of Saul and David” BCT 3 (2007): 19.1–19.13.
26. K. Clark and M. Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (London: Belknap, 1984), 207.
27. Green, “Experiential Learning,” 19.11.
ambiguity of human interaction is included in the account. The chapter concludes with a statement of the method to be followed as we seek “interpretative understanding.”
Just as people in real life have different opinions about the goods that should be pursued in the situations in which they nd themselves, so different narrative voices can recommend—through both word and action—their particular interpretation of the situation to the reader. Yet although the author has characters speak with “voices” that maintain various perspectives upon the moral goods that feature in the story, in the nal analysis he either subverts or approves of each voice in order to make a theological point. While the complexity of the narratives we shall examine points to the author’s desire that readers should become involved with characters he does not thereby leave his readers groping around in the dark, but leads them to the desired conclusion by means of the presentation of each character. Chapter 2 suggests that in the books of Samuel this is done primarily not through explicit evaluation but by presenting David, Jonathan and Saul in ways that are either consonant or incompatible with being a “real man” in ancient Near Eastern societies. As readers comprehend how each one compares to the ideal view of “hegemonic masculinity” they begin to accept or distrust his narrative voice, independently of whether what the voice says chimes with culturally accepted moralities.
Chapter 3 centres upon the family in ancient Israel and how the moral imperative of family loyalty features in the biblical story. A brief description of anthropological theorizing of kinship obligations enables us to see that the matter cannot simply be reduced to “honour your father and mother.” Yet considering why Saul’s voice would have re ected ancient Israelite mores enables us to understand how Jonathan’s friendship with David was counter-cultural.
In Chapter 4 a variety of perspectives upon love and loyalty in both the Old Testament and contemporary societies are examined, with particular attention to the ways in which the categories of family and friendship are both constructed and used by individuals for their own ends. As well as noting that there is often a blurring of the lines between the two groups, I highlight how Jonathan and David’s covenant is not unexpected. It is another matter, of course, whether its challenge to ancient “family values” is approved; I will argue that it was, something that has important rami cations for the narrative’s theological import.
The model of “honour and shame” has become an increasingly popular lens through which to read biblical texts and Chapter 5 discusses how each is conceived in the discipline of anthropology. In particular, I query whether the use of the “honour and shame” dyad in biblical studies has
been an entirely helpful development. I also show, however, that Saul does indeed shame his son when he challenges him at the feast in 1 Sam 20.
It is possible to conceive this study as an attempt to answer three questions, for by providing answers to them one comprehends not only what occurs within the story, but the narrative’s purpose. The rst question enquires into the moral conundrum facing the narrative’s characters. The second asks how the con ict of moral values is resolved by each character. And the third how the author evaluates their choices.
As the title of this book makes clear, Sons or Lovers concerns a con ict of interests. Both David and Jonathan are confronted with situations, some of their own making, in which they much choose whether to ful l lial duties or maintain loyalty to their friend. They must choose, in other words, whether to comply with the obligations expected of sons or of friends. They cannot be both; being sons and lovers is impossible once they are ensnared in the web of crisscrossing commitments entailed by their relations with their respective families and each other: they must choose to be sons or lovers. Given that the books of Samuel comprise an “apology for David,” the tale of the men’s choices legitimizes usurpation of the Saulide monarchy by the house of David.28 Yet Jonathan and David’s elections are unexpected; ancient readers would have found the “true Union” lauded by Abraham Cowley in his seventeenth-century epic poem counterintuitive, even shocking.
28. On how these texts promote David’s house, see P. K. McCarter, “The Apology of David,” JBL 99 (1980): 489–504. For parallels between the “History of David’s Rise” with Neo-Babylonian texts, see M. B. Dick, “The ‘History of David’s Rise to Power’ and the Neo-Babylonian Succession Apologies,” in David and Zion: Biblical Studies in Honor of J. J. M. Roberts (ed. B. F. Batto and K. L. Roberts; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 3–19.
Chapter 1
INTERPRETING DAVID AND JONATHAN
T’ unbind the charms that in light Fables lie, And teach that truth is True t Poes ie
—Abraham
Cowley, Davideis1
The epigraph invites us to consider what “charms” are bound within the “slight fable” of the David–Jonathan narratives. Abraham Cowley supposes that these treasures are not simply lying on the surface of the text waiting to be picked up by any passer-by, as it were, but that they need to be unearthed. How one should approach this task is the concern of interpretation and will be the focus of this chapter.
It is widely recognized that positivistic readings of texts are a chimera because readers in uence what is interpreted, how interpretation takes place and the resultant interpretation. This is not, however, a counsel of despair advocating the abandonment of the interpretative quest, but a prompt to clarify methodology. For while particular approaches or techniques do not produce incontrovertible understandings, transparency enables fellow readers to identify exactly where and why they concur with or contest any interpretation.
There are two main pillars to the approach adopted here. The rst concerns how to read the text. We observed above that Barbara Green’s work with Mikhail Bakhtin is most suggestive and the rst section of this chapter, therefore, examines to what extent his theory of dialogism can be appropriated for reading biblical narrative. The second pillar involves the use of anthropology. Social-scienti c interpretation is now well established in biblical studies, yet debates about how social-science should be employed continue. These discussions often occur because of different assumptions about the relationship of individual action and cultural
1. Cowley, Davideis, 5 (emphasis and spelling original).
context. The anthropological and sociological literature explores this debate in terms of “structure” and “agency”; indeed, the tension between them has been called “a leitmotiv in the history of the social sciences.”2 What is at issue is the nature of the source or prompt for action. Is it social structure, that is, the context of action? Or is it agency, that is, the acting subject, the individual who decides to act? Or is it a mixture of the two? This chapter’s second section will examine these questions, also adding an important ingredient to the mix: the matter of ubiquitous ambiguity in human interaction.
One of the premises of this interdisciplinary approach is that each discipline should be considered on its own terms before being brought into conversation with others. Although some readers may think that the discussion at this point is overly “anthropological,” it is essential if biblical scholars are not to ride roughshod over the social science informing their exegesis. A further advantage of this procedure is that because an understanding of human interaction will have been outlined in the second section, in the concluding part of the chapter my interpretative approach can simply be summarized.
1. Hearing Voices: Reading with Mikhail Bakhtin
A rst step towards comprehending Mikhail Bakhtin’s work is to understand where he locates meaning.3 In contradistinction to both personalists, who maintain that I hold meaning, and to deconstructionalists, who hold that no one owns meaning, Bakhtin argues that we possess meaning. Although he thereby denies absolute truth—a courageous contention in the totalitarian political context of Stalinist Russia—one might accept Bakhtin’s starting point on the basis that knowledge of truth is partial.
Bakhtin’s approach has three main components, viz. heteroglossia, dialogism and polyphony; we will consider each in turn. Heteroglossia concerns “languages,” that is, a form of discourse shaped by the social reality of the speaker at that moment. An example would be a male peasant dealing with a state bureaucrat. Even though there is only one national language the fact of social strati cation means various socially
2. C. B. Brettell, “The Individual/Agent and Culture/Structure in the History of the Social Sciences,” SSH 26 (2002): 429–45 (442).
3. See Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 11–12, 348. The critical introductions contain full bibliographies; the most relevant essay for our concerns is M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (ed. M. Holquist; trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist; Austin: Texas University Press, 1981), 259–401.
1. Interpreting David and Jonathan 13
positioned “languages” exist simultaneously. Bakhtin argues that heteroglot “languages” not only take different perspectives on the world but “dialogue” with each other, asserting that all languages of heteroglossia, whatever the principle underlying them and making each unique, are speci c points of view on the world, forms for conceptualizing the world in words… As such they all may be juxtaposed to one another, mutually supplement one another, contradict one another and be interrelated dialogically.4
The environment into which a particular utterance is projected is thus “dialogized heteroglossia”5; and the meaning of the utterance is not objectively xed, but evolves in dialogue with its heteroglossic context. Bakhtin offers a suggestive metaphor for this process: If we imagine the intention of such a word, that is, its directionality toward the object, in the form of a ray of light, then the living and unrepeatable play of colors and light on the facets of the image that it constructs can be explained as the spectral dispersion of the ray-word, not within the object itself…but rather as its spectral dispersion in an atmosphere lled with alien words, value judgments and accents through which the ray passes on its way toward the object; the social atmosphere of the word, the atmosphere that surrounds the object, makes the facets of the image sparkle.6
Dialogism is thus an essential process in a heteroglossic world of socially derived “languages.”
Bakhtin theorized about the novel employing these insights, positing two sorts of novelistic works, the sophistic and dialogic.7 The former is essentially monologic. Although it may re ect heteroglossia, the voices are not equally signi cant, for the non-authorial “language” “appears, in essence, as a thing, it does not lie on the same plane with the real language of the work: it is the depicted gesture of one of the characters and does not appear as an aspect of the word doing the depicting.”8 This is the case, for example, with the rhetorical genre, which instead of accepting dialogism attempts “to outwit possible retorts to itself.”9 In contrast, the dialogic novel lets all voices be heard, not solely the author’s. The plot, for example, “serves to represent speaking persons and their
4. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 291–92.
5. Ibid., 272.
6. Ibid., 277 (emphasis original).
7. Bakhtin used the terms First Line and Second Line. He used the epithet “sophistic” of the former, I supply “dialogic” for the latter.
8. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 287 (emphasis original).
9. Ibid., 353.
Sons or Lovers
ideological worlds. What is realized in the novel is the process of coming to know one’s own language as it is perceived in someone else’s language.”10 It is fallacious to suppose that this variety of literature is “just chaotically multi-voiced; it is art, and its special artistic province is dialogized heteroglossia: different points of view embodied in ‘voice zones’ and intentional hybridizations that test one another and question each other’s boundaries and authority.”11Bakhtin labelled this authorial strategy “polyphony.” Polyphony is not heteroglossia, rather polyphony is a way of realizing heteroglossia in the novel, without being identical to heteroglossia. “Polyphony” means “multi-voicedness,” while “heteroglossia” means “multi-languaged-ness,” and this apparently small difference in meaning is very signi cant. Polyphony refers to the arrangement of heteroglot variety into an aesthetic pattern. One of the principal ways of ensuring the presence of the different voices of heteroglossia in the novel is the creation of ctional characters.12
Polyphony, therefore, concerns the relationship of authors to the text. In the polyphonic novel they do not have the nal word, but are participants who let themselves be guided by dialogues that emerge from their characters.
It is helpful to consider several criticisms directed at Bakhtin’s thesis in order to determine to what extent dialogism might be a useful exegetical tool for this study. The rst observation is that Bakhtin considers only spoken discourse. Only thus can he assert that Adam alone, who “approached a virginal and as yet verbally unquali ed world with the rst word, could really have escaped from start to nish this dialogic inter-orientation with the alien word that occurs in the object.”13 Even allowing that Bakhtin uses the creation accounts rhetorically, a pertinent observation is that both Gen 1:28 and Gen 2:18–20 conceive human action as a response to God’s prior communication, which includes both word (“be fruitful and multiply”) and act (creation, bringing the animals to Adam). Emerson argues this has implications for Bakhtin’s interpretation of Dostoevsky: “The possibility that verbal dialogue might actually drain away value or atten out a subtlety or be so subject to terror
10. Ibid., 365.
11. C. Emerson, “Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel (ed. M. V. Jones and R. F. Miller; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 271–92 (286–87, emphasis original).
12. S. Vice, Introducing Bakhtin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 113. Bakhtin’s imprecision concerning nomenclature has generated debate around this issue, on which see Rowe, Michal’s Moral Dilemma, 108 n. 33.
13. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 279.
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
Keith turned on him almost savagely “How dare you ask me that, Ewen Cameron! Do you think I baulked Guthrie only to go in cold blood and bring you to the scaffold myself? Are you like the Duke, that you can fancy I would do such a thing for any consideration on earth . . . and witness moreover to acts by which I had been the gainer?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Ewen mildly. “In truth I was not thinking of the implications of what I said. But, Windham,” he went on anxiously, “has not your refusal involved you once more in Cumberland’s displeasure? I’m sure it has!”
“No, no,” said Keith mendaciously. “He was angry, but he has not punished me further. He could not force me to be a witness; and Lord Albemarle has subsequently shown me some favour, and holds out hopes of employing me, which is why I am here at Fort Augustus. As far as I am concerned, therefore, good may yet come out of evil.—But, tell me, to what does this evidence at Fort William amount?”
But Ewen replied by another question. “What was the bribe which Cumberland offered you to give evidence against me?”
“Bribe!” exclaimed Keith, rather over-hastily. “I said nothing about a bribe. I want to hear about these witnesses at Fort William.”
“But I want to know what you have sacrificed for my sake? Or perhaps it would be truer to say, for the sake of your own selfrespect? Cumberland did offer you something, did he not?”
“Nothing of consequence,” answered Keith carelessly.
“You will not tell me what it was? Then I know that it was something which you coveted. I seem fated to bring you misfortune, Windham,” said the Highlander rather sadly. “And yet I never really wished you other than well.”
“But I have brought you even more,” said Keith; “and indeed I wished you well, too.” His eyes were on the heap of straw in the corner which constituted Ewen’s bed. “If I had not ridden by the shieling hut that day, you would be lying quietly among the mountains of your own land and not—not about to set out for the chance, at least, of a death far away, and . . . and much less merciful. I should like to hear you say that you forgive me for that.”
“Forgive you for saving my life!” exclaimed Ewen. “My dear Windham, you are really absurd! Don’t, for God’s sake, go recalling the crazy things I said to you at our last meeting! You must remember that I was nearly out of my senses then.”
“I know that, and I have never given them another thought, I assure you. But there is a count,” said Keith rather hesitatingly, “on which you must find it hard to forgive me—suffering of the mind for which I must always hold myself in a measure responsible. You know to what I refer.”
Ewen looked down at the floor “I had some dark days, it is true. . . Yes, they were very dark . . . but not so dark after your return. You gave me hope; and above all you gave me back that night in the hut.” He smiled. “I often think of it. I think of it when I hear very different stories of the English. And I suppose you know that nothing came of my betrayal—they never even searched the place for Lochiel, I believe. And, moreover”—he suddenly looked almost boyishly elated and mischievous—“by some wonderful mischance I never gave the name of the mountain where the secret place was. In my sleep I presented them with the name of Ben Loy, where you came upon me, and they did not discover the error until too late.”
Keith put his hand on the speaker’s knee. “I heard at Inverness, to my satisfaction, that Lochiel had escaped capture. Then that is all over, and your mind at rest; I am thankful.”
Ewen looked grave again. “No, it cannot be at rest until I am sure that Lochiel knows the truth.”
“But why should he ever hear anything at all about the matter?”
“And I have thought that at my trial,” went on Ewen without taking notice of the interruption, “I may get the chance of publicly denying that I gave the information knowingly. And then I believe that I could die in peace.”
Keith withdrew his hand. “Why do you make so sure of your condemnation?” he asked almost irritably. “Of what real worth is the testimony of persons who imagine that they saw you during a siege? No one could swear to you out of so many Camerons!”
“You think we are all as alike as sheep?” queried Ewen, looking amused. “But I had at least one hand-to-hand conflict with the Argyll militia, and another day I encountered a writer of Maryburgh with
whom I had had dealings; he knew me at once, and will be only too glad to give evidence against me; I cannot think how they have not got hold of it already.—No, Windham, ’tis better to face the truth; once I reach Fort William I am certainly for Carlisle, and with such good evidence against me I have small chance of acquittal. I have known that for the last ten days; though naturally I have not acquainted the authorities with the excellent case they are like to have.”
And to this Keith found nothing to say. It was strange, it was alarming, to feel, as by this time he did, how strongly their intimacy had progressed in two months of absence and, on his side, of deliberate abstention from communication—like the roots of two trees growing secretly towards each other in darkness. But it was so; and now the roots must be severed.
“I hear that some of the prisoners at Inverness intend to swear that they were forced out,” he remarked after a silence.
“I dare say that may be true of some of them,” replied Ewen with composure. “But you are not suggesting that I should employ that plea, are you?”
“I know too well that you would not,” returned his visitor, and then murmured something about transportation as a possible alternative to a worse fate.
“Transportation!” exclaimed the Highlander. “To be sent to work in the plantations oversea as an indentured servant! I’d far liefer be hanged and quartered!”
Keith sighed heavily. “Yes, I have brought you nothing but harm. I would give my right hand to save you—and I can do nothing!”
Ewen twisted round on his stool. “How can you say that? Who knows what the want of your evidence at Carlisle may mean to me? For there is always a chance that the witnesses at Fort William may have left or died.”
“You have just said that once you reached Fort William there was no chance of escaping Carlisle. I am not a child, Ardroy!” retorted Keith, glowering at him in his own pain.
“Neither am I,” replied Ewen with a sudden smile. “Do not, therefore, talk about wishing in vain to give your right hand for my
sake, for I strongly suspect that you have already given what means as much or more to you.”
Keith got up, that the speaker might not see in his face how near this guess went to the truth. “Even in my refusal to witness against you,” he said gloomily, “I begin to think that I acted like a fool. For, as I told His Royal Highness, if he sent me to Carlisle by force, as he threatened to do, nothing should have prevented my testifying also to your granting me my life in Lochaber and my liberty in Edinburgh. I have thought since that, on that score, it might have been better to agree to go. . . . But no, I could not have done it!” he added.
Ewen smiled up at him with a look that was almost affection, and laid his manacled hand on his cuff. “I almost wish that you had consented, so that we might meet again. For, if old Angus is right, this is our last meeting—I have counted them many times. And, indeed, I do not see how it could be otherwise. So”—his voice was very gentle—“we cannot bring each other misfortune any more.”
The words knocked sharply at Keith’s heart. And how young the speaker looked, for all his half-starved air; a boy going to extinction, while he, only four years his senior, felt as if he were middle-aged. (But no, at their last meeting, when he had trembled before him, Ewen had not been a boy.)
“Is there nothing I can do for you?” he asked painfully. “Do your kindred know of your situation; I suppose so?”
“I am not sure if my aunt knows. If she does, she has no doubt tried to communicate with my wife in France, but——”
“Your wife! Then you——”
“Yes. Miss Grant and I were married at Inverness in March. She is in France with her sick father, and since the battle I have been unable to write to her, so that, unless my aunt has contrived to do so, she may not know whether I am alive or dead. If you would write to her, Windham—you remember her, no doubt—that would indeed be a kindness. Will you?”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” answered Keith, though he did not like the prospect. “But,” he went on with a little hesitation, “why do you not write yourself, and I would use my best endeavours that the letter should reach her.”
“I cannot write,” said Ewen. “They will not allow me the materials; I have often tried to come by them. You must tell her of me, if you will; and I particularly charge you not to omit how you saved my life and visited me, and . . . and all the rest that you have done,” he concluded a trifle unsteadily. “That is a last command, Windham.”
But Keith had drawn a pencil from his pocket. “You had a book in your hand when I came in; can you not tear out a blank page and write upon that? I promise you that, if I can compass it, no eye shall see the letter but your wife’s.”
“A book?” queried Ewen. “Ah, yes, but ’tis only a little Gaelic psalter which I contrived to get hold of. However——” He took it out of his pocket, remarking that the pages were but small, and, carefully tearing out the fly-leaf, accepted the proffered pencil. Keith, unable to withdraw as he would have wished, walked slowly up and down the narrow place with bent head. “I have saved him for this!” was still the burden of his thoughts. Had Ardroy been shot that day he would have known little about it; he was barely conscious. It would have been over in a moment, and it would have been a man’s death, too. Now . . . he shuddered to think of the alternative, purposely prolonged and horrible, the death of an animal in the shambles. He hoped with all his heart that Alison Cameron, away in France, did not know, and would never hear, the details of the English sentence for treason.
Ewen did not write much, for there was not a great deal of space on his paper. He read it over very composedly and signed his name. Then he folded the letter, stooped his head and put his lips to it. Keith turned his back, but the distance between them was so small that he knew that the writer, after that, had buried his face in his hands.
Ah, if only he had listened to him on that evening last summer, which now seemed such centuries ago, he would not now be giving up his love, as well as his life and lands!
But there was a clashing behind him; Ewen was getting to his feet. “I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting so long. Since you are so good I think that I should like to send my wife also the only remembrance that I can send. Have you a knife, and can you trust me with it?—or, better still, will you cut off a piece of this for her?”
He indicated his hair, and coming closer, bent his head. So Keith, with a rather blunt penknife, and not particularly good eyesight at the moment, sawed off a little lock on his temple.
“Women like such things,” said the young man half apologetically as Keith, his mouth tight shut, wrapped the trophy in his handkerchief. “And the more of which one can cheat Carlisle gate the better.” He spoke quite lightly and calmly, but his little letter, which he gave Keith the moment after, had been so tightly held in his hand that it was marked with his nail-prints. “I have written the direction upon it,” he went on, watching the Englishman put it carefully away. “Perhaps I may be able to write to her once more from Carlisle, but who knows? And the messenger might not be trustworthy, whereas I know that you are.—Now, Windham, there is another matter. The money you so generously left for my use——”
“For God’s sake don’t think of that now!” cried Keith, quite distracted.
“But I must! Miss Cameron, if I can communicate with her, which may be allowed at Carlisle——”
“Will you waste time over a few guineas? In Heaven’s name, take them as a gift—cannot you see that it would be kinder to me?”
Ewen evidently saw; he could hardly fail to see it. “Very well, then I will; and thank you for the gift. After all, I took a greater at your hands on Beinn Laoigh. And do you remember the money you left as payment for my clothes at Fassefern House? My sorrow, but I was angry with you! I threw it away into the bushes, and Clanranald’s and Keppoch’s men hunted for it all night, so I heard afterwards.” His tone suddenly changed. “Do you mean to leave this penknife here— is that a gift, too?”
He pointed to that object, lying where Keith had laid it down on one of the stools in order to have both hands free to wrap up the lock of hair. The Englishman hesitated, looking from it to the prisoner, and read, plain to see in his eyes, the value which he would set on even so small and blunt a weapon to-morrow For a moment he was tempted, against honour and duty.
“Why did you put me in mind of it?” he asked reproachfully. “I had indeed honestly forgotten it, and had I so left it, you could have taken
it with you to-morrow! But I gave Lord Albemarle my word not to help you in any way to escape . . .”
Ewen instantly picked up the penknife, shut it, and held it out to him. “Take it. They are sure, too, to search me before I go to-morrow. Come,” he still held it out, “you have sacrificed enough for me; your honour you shall not sacrifice!”
As Keith reluctantly took the knife from the shackled hand he had a shock as if a lightning flash had stabbed asunder the sky above him and shown him something he had never seen—never wished to see—before. The barren and solitary path which he had marked out for himself through life was not the best! Here was a man who would never willingly fail friend or lover, much less play them false. Now, at this their last meeting, when friendship with him was a thing impossible of realisation, he knew that he would have asked nothing better—he who never wished for a friend.
Like a lightning flash too in its speed the revelation was over. Mechanically he put the penknife away, and Ewen limped the few paces back to his stool. “Come and sit down again, Windham,” he said, “for once more you cannot get out if you wish to. And there is a matter about which I have long been curious. Why do you bear a Scots name—if I may ask without indiscretion? Have you perhaps Scottish kin?”
Keith, sitting down beside him again, shook his head. “There’s not a soul of my blood north of Tweed. But my father, who was a soldier also, had once a Scottish friend, killed at Malplaquet before I was born, for whom he must have had a great affection, since he gave me his name.”
They looked at each other, and the shadowy dead Scot of Marlborough’s wars seemed, to his namesake at least, to assume the shape of a symbol or a prophecy. Keith shivered suddenly.
“I can hardly hope,” said the Jacobite, “that you will care to name your son after me when I have ended . . . not on a battlefield . . . but I should like to feel that you will remember sometimes, not me, but what you did for me. For whereas you think but poorly of your fellowmen and yourself—or am I wrong?—you act, Keith Windham, very much otherwise!”
Moved and startled, Keith dropped his gaze and stared between his knees at the floor. Yes, they might have been friends; they were meant to be friends—Ardroy felt that too, did he? “I . . . in truth I do not well know what I think,” he murmured; “and, as for my actions, why, I seem to have failed on every side.—But one thing I do know,” he went on with a touch of defiance, “and that is, that I do not believe in your Highland second sight. Who can say that we shall not meet again—and you a free man?”
Ewen looked hard at him a moment. Outside the jangling of keys could be heard coming nearer “I wish very much that I could think so too,” he answered simply, as he rose to his feet with a corresponding clashing. And again the strange constriction in his throat betrayed Keith into irritation.
“Are you so superstitious, Ardroy, that you’ll read into an old man’s maunderings a menace that was never there? Did your fosterfather say a word about death in his precious prophecy? I warrant he did not!”
Ewen smiled. “My dear Windham, at bottom I believe as little in the two sights as you. But surely ’tis not superstition to realise that I am at least threatened with that fate. Yet who knows? If it pass me by, and we ever meet again in this world, then maybe I’ll have more time to thank you fitly for all you have done and given up for me. Yet I do thank you now, from my heart—from my inmost heart!”
He held out his fettered hands, and Keith as he took them was hardly capable of speech.
“I have failed in everything,” he muttered. “But your letter—I promise you it shall go by a safe hand. I . . . I . . .” The door, opening, recalled him to an Englishman’s last obligation, the suppression of emotion before witnesses. “To-morrow,” he said, loosing his grasp, and in a tolerably composed voice, “to-morrow you will at least be out of this dismal place and free of those irons.”
“Aye, will he,” commented the gaoler in the doorway. “And riding a braw horse forbye!”
“I doubt I’ll make much show as a horseman,” replied Ewen. “I fear I shall fall off.”
“Ye’re no’ like tae hae the chance, Mr. Cameron,” replied the man dryly. “Ye’ll be tied on.—Noo, sir, if ye please.”
“What time is he to start?” asked Keith.
“Sax o’ the clock.” The keys jingled impatiently.
Keith took a resolve. But he did not put it into words. All he said was “Good-bye,” and, for fear of being totally unmanned, stole only the most cursory glance at the pale, gravely smiling face under the rather untidy auburn hair.
But Ewen held out his hand again. “Beannachd leat, as we say in the Erse. ‘Blessings go with you; may a straight path be before you, and a happy end to your journey’!”
Without answering Keith wrung the hand and went quickly up the steps past the gaoler and into the passage. He was hardly there before the heavy door clanged to between him and his last meeting with Ewen Cameron.
“A peety,” said the gaoler reflectively, taking the key from the lock, “a peety yon muckle young man behoves to hae a rope aboot his thrapple. But there, wha will tae Cupar maun tae Cupar . . . Yon’s the way up, sir.”
At twenty minutes to seven next morning Keith Windham, having propped himself up on one elbow in his camp bed, was staring with incredulous and remorseful eyes at the watch which he had just drawn from beneath his pillow. That he should not wake in time to catch a final glimpse of Ardroy as he rode away had never occurred to him; the question last night had rather been whether he should ever get to sleep . . .
Well, evidently old Angus MacMartin’s fates were determined that he should not see Ewen Cameron again. And after all, he thought, trying to stifle regret, did I really desire to see him carried away, bound upon a horse, by Kingston’s dragoons?
When he was dressed he went to the door of the tent, which opened towards Loch Ness, and looked out. It was a beautiful, fresh morning, and the loch was smiling up at the flanking hills. Even the ruins of the fort, rearing themselves against that brightness, looked less blackened in the sunshine. But for Keith those gutted buildings held nothing now; and the busy camp around him was empty, too.
How far on the road were they got by this time, and were the troopers riding too fast . . . ?
He dropped the flap of the tent and, going over to the table, took out from the breast of his uniform the handkerchief with the curl of hair and the scrap of a letter, and sealed them up carefully in a little packet, first copying down the address and scrupulously averting his eyes from the rest of the torn fly-leaf in doing so. Then, wondering how soon and in what manner he should find an opportunity of fulfilling his trust, he sat on, staring at the packet, now directed in his own hand to Mrs. Ewen Cameron at an address in Havre-de-Grâce.
What was it that Ardroy had wished him yesterday—a straight path and a happy end to his journey. Ewen’s own path seemed straighter than his, now, but the end to which it led? Keith had a sudden horrible vision, corollary of those which had haunted him in the night. He pressed his hands over his eyes and bade it begone, bade himself be as little perturbed at the prospect as Ewen himself had been yesterday—Ewen who would certainly go cheerfully and courageously to that ghastly business, but who, had it not been for his interference, might be lying now unmutilated under the turf of Ben Loy, with only the plovers and the curlews to disturb his rest.
Keith suddenly got up and began to pace restlessly to and fro, his head on his breast. He was finding his self-defensive philosophy of a very meagre assistance now. If he were again the child he had been, the child who every night at his nurse’s knee asked so simply and naturally for what he desired, it would have been easy to utter the prayer in his heart. But of what use such supplication to the Power whose only concern with the world was that He had set it a-rolling? Yet it was some time before he came to a standstill, and, with a heavy sigh, replaced in his breast the little packet for Ewen Cameron’s wife; with this for consolation in his mind, that he who was riding southward was not yet condemned, and that till the sentence was spoken his case was not hopeless.
All that afternoon there came marching wearily back to Fort Augustus, in a woeful state of fatigue and rags, the various units of the fifteen hundred men whom Cumberland had sent out in his last
battue for Prince Charles nearly a fortnight before. They had met with no success whatever.
At nine o’clock that evening Keith, to his surprise, received a summons from Lord Albemarle, and found him heated and discomposed.
“’Tis a most extraordinary and vexatious thing,” declared the Earl, pacing up and down his quarters with his heavy tread. “It seems as though the Pretender’s son must have broken through the chain of sentry posts round Clanranald’s country, and yet I can scarce believe it, they were so close together I shall make a fresh effort, with fresh men; these poor fellows are quite worn out with their exertions. For my part, Major Windham, I declare that to capture that young man, source of all our woes, I should with infinite pleasure walk barefoot from Pole to Pole!”
Had Lord Albemarle but known, no such heroic pilgrimage was required of him; a ten-mile expedition that night to a certain cave in Glenmoriston would have been sufficient.
“Your Lordship’s zeal is common knowledge,” murmured Keith, wondering what the Commander-in-Chief wanted him for “If it could only be crowned with success . . .”
“Aye, if only it could! One report says,” continued the Earl, going to a table and turning over some papers, “that the Pretender’s son is in Badenoch on his way to the east coast; another that he has gone north to Caithness. Some say he is still in Morar and Knoidart; and the very latest of all declares that he has gone back to the Long Island—as you know they call that chain of islands from South Uist to Lewis. It is distracting!”
It was; but Keith could not think why he should have been summoned to hear this truth.
“Why, bless my soul,” said Albemarle, as if he had read his thoughts, “I am so prodigiously put about that I have forgotten, I believe, to tell you, Major Windham, that you are one of the officers whom I design to employ in my new effort.”
“My Lord!” ejaculated Keith, flushing.
“Yes, I intend to send you without delay to the neighbourhood of Arisaig, not because I think that the young man is there at the moment, though one report says so, but because I think it not
unlikely he may try in the end to escape from the very spot where he landed last July.”
“Your Lordship is really too good,” stammered Keith, rather overcome. “If the most active vigilance——”
“Yes,” cut in Albemarle, “I depend upon you to show that, Major Windham. Your future is in your own hands, and my reputation, too. For reasons upon which I touched the other day, it is you whom I am sending to what I cannot but consider the most likely spot for securing the person of the arch-rebel. The day that you bring him back a prisoner your difference with His Royal Highness will be no more remembered against you. And perhaps I, too,” added the Earl with a sigh, “shall be able to leave this most distasteful country.”
“I assure your Lordship,” said Keith with a beating heart, “that failure shall not be due to any want of exertion on my part. Your generous selection of me for this expedition overwhelms me with gratitude, and whether I secure the prize or no I shall be your Lordship’s lifelong debtor for the opportunity.”
Lord Albemarle nodded, pleased as one who knows that he confers a benefit. “You will march at daybreak with a hundred men. I do not say that you are to station yourself exclusively at this Loch nan—on my soul, I cannot pronounce its outlandish name. Dispose your men as you think best. My secretary is preparing a few notes for your guidance. The devil of it is, however,” confessed the harassed commander in a further burst of confidence, “that these informations, when one receives them, are always a se’nnight or two out of date.” And, after adding a few more recommendations as to Keith’s conduct, he said kindly, “Now go and get some sleep, Windham—and good luck to your endeavours!”
Keith went out as one who walks on air. A chance at last—the greatest, if only he could seize it! So the day which had taken from him something which he felt that he had never really possessed had brought him . . . no, not compensation for the loss, for that, perhaps, he could never have, but opportunity to do more than purge his disgrace—to make himself the most envied man in the three kingdoms.
