“Oh, not alone, because his name is Christ; Oh, not alone, because Judea waits
This man-child for her King—the star stands still!
Its glory reinstates,
Beyond humiliation’s utmost ill,
On peerless throne which she alone can fill,
Each earthly woman! Motherhood is priced
Of God, at price no man may dare
To lessen or misunderstand.
...
The crown of purest purity revealed
Virginity eternal, signed and sealed
Upon all motherhood.”
—Helen Hunt.
 
“In sorrow thou shalt bring forth.”—Gen. iii. 16.
 
“Thou shalt be saved in child-bearing.”—Tim. ii. 15.
 
Hundreds of willing hands, directed by Miriamne, were engaged in preparations for fitly celebrating the feast of the Nativity at Bethany. There was cheerful expectation everywhere in the village, and the Temple of Allegory was smiling and glowing by day and by night with flowers and lights.
 
“Miriamne, look forth! There approaches our domicile[596] a company of singing maidens, wearing holly wreaths and bearing a kline! What can it mean?”
 
An instant of wonderment ready to echo the chaplain’s question possessed Miriamne, then with a glow of satisfaction on her pale face, she cried:
 
“I know it all! The maidens of our fraternity have been declaring for a month past they’d have me this Christmas at our Temple on the Hill, if they must needs carry me thither!”
 
“And they knew you were drooping? Who told them? Not I.”
 
“Love has quick eyes, and my sisters love indeed!
 
“But, Miriamne, you surely will not risk your life, so precious to all, by going forth to-day?”
 
“The holly, over-canopying the couch they bear, says to me: ‘Yea, go.’ I told them the secret of the holly, and how those ancient Romans, thinking their deities largely sylvan, cherished this shrub, so persistently evergreen, in the belief that it afforded a safe and certain abiding place for their gods in bitter, biting days of winter. The maidens remember their lesson.”
 
And shortly after, all went forth toward the temple, the physically weak but spiritually strong woman borne by her followers in a sort of triumph, and Cornelius leading; the latter, that day was one of the happiest, proudest men in all Syria. He rejoiced and exulted in being companion of a woman such as Miriamne was.
 
Miriamne entered the temple to find a vast congregation awaiting her. There was a ripple of excitement, a deep murmuring of satisfied voices almost reaching the proportion of a masculine outbreak of applause, as she appeared. Contentment was depicted[597] on all faces, on many real happiness. Neither was it transitory; there was a throbbing of gladness running back and forth, rising higher and higher, until it finally broke out into an impromptu “Gloria in excelsis!” Then followed a scripture lesson:
 
“And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.
 
“And he read therein before the street that was before the water-gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of the people were attentive unto the book of the law.”
 
And now the attention of all was drawn to the sound of footsteps in the throbbings of a march, keeping time to the tones of the organ and the flourishings of cymbals. Nigh an hundred Syrian maidens, wearing girdles and crowns of evergreen, moved with graceful evolutions from the temple’s east entrance and quickly formed in a crescent nigh to Cornelius and Miriamne. They paused in their progress but still kept time with their feet and swinging cymbals. Then the crescent was broken; those in the center standing in lines that made a cross; those at either end grouping as stars.
 
“Sisters, we’d hear the fitting song of this day,” said Miriamne. Forthwith the gathered company of garlanded maidens began to retire, but in perfect order, the two star groups passing along as the company making the cross went, so preserving the form of the tableau, until the exits were reached. As the procession went forth the temple bell tolled solemnly,[598] and the maidens sang, accompanied by organ-notes which died away finally like the sigh of tired waves on a beaten strand. Cornelius was silent, though his eyes were like the eyes of a child awakened from a dream of wonderland.
 
Miriamne penetrating his thoughts remarked:
 
“Is Cornelius weary of questioning?”
 
“I listen as to autumn winds in a scared flight through weeping forests, instead of to Christmas exultations!”
 
“The singers are of my ‘Miriamne Band,’ as they call themselves, in honor of the sister of Moses, Israel’s greatest law giver.”
 
“Methinks all here are mystics in thought and poets in expression!”
 
“Then so was God. We are but reproducing His lessons! Remember now how the Egyptian Pharaoh once commanded that all the male children of his Israelitish captives be put to death, to the intent that eventually all the females should become the prey of his people.”
 
“Miriamne journeys far from Bethlehem.”
 
“The mother and the sister watched the ark in which the infant Moses was given to the cruel mercies of the Nile.”
 
“I remember, but there come no carols from the bullrushes.”
 
“Yea, finer than from the reeds of Pan. Listen; the ark, emblem of God’s covenant, carried the law. The mother and sisters, by the ministries of a love which never faltered, frustrated wily Egypt, saved themselves, their male companions, and finally their whole race. When God embalms a history it is well to look into it for germs of mighty portent.”
 
[599]
 
“But thinking of this distant and bitter history, we are kept from Bethlehem, Miriamne.”
 
“So the Red Sea and the wilderness preceded the Promised Land. You remember there were fears and tears before Miriam and her mother saw their babe safely adopted at the palace; so there were pains and toils to Mary along the way from Bethlehem’s manger to Bethany’s mount of Ascension.”
 
The words of Miriamne were broken off by a strain of the organ that was very like a moan of the distressed.
 
“Look yonder!”
 
The chaplain did as bidden, following a motion of his wife’s hand, and saw the folds of a huge black curtain slowly rising from in front of one of the temple alcoves.
 
“Woman’s sorrow is tardily lifted!” exclaimed his wife; then there came to his ears words of human voices, which were joining in the almost human-like moanings of the organ;
“In Rama was there a voice heard;
Lamentation and weeping and great mourning;
Rachel weeping for her children,
And would not be comforted,
Because they are not.”
 
“Rachel and funeral dirges seem still distant from the songs of the angels in Judea!”
 
“Rachel is here likened to Mary by the Apostle Matthew.”
 
“I liken Rachel to Miriamne: for the former Jacob served fourteen years which, for the love he bore her, seemed but a few days. Cornelius could have done as much for Miriamne.”
 
[600]
 
“My knightly spouse goes from Bethlehem himself toward Bethany. Go back now.”
 
“I listen; lead me.”
 
“At Rama, the site of the tomb of Mary’s son, the converted publican, St. Matthew, told how death began its cruel hunt of the Virgin’s loved Child at His very cradle. Sorrow envies joy; death battles life, and ever more woman’s love, the choicest rose of life, has been crossed by the destroyer of human happiness; that is human hatings.”
 
“But how is Rachel so like Mary?”
 
“A common agony and common needs make all women akin.”
 
“I accord great homage to the woman who taught one so selfish, gnarled and rugged of soul as Jacob was to love so deeply, as he was taught to love by her, and yet almost infinitely I separate her from our Rose and Queen.”
 
“Rachel died a martyr in maternity and therefore is worthy of place among the regal women of earth. She was one of that line of women who gave their lives for others. The line survives, and suffers through the years; all-worthy, but not fully honored. Saint Matthew touched an all-responsive chord when he voiced the Divine pity for all motherhood, by placing the sorrows of Rachel and of Mary side by side. The plain man unconsciously soars to the plane of the prophets and poets when he is moved by human need or Divine justice.”
 
“The lesson is irresistible, but still I’m waiting for the celestial melodies that awakened the shepherd the night of the Nativity!”
 
“My partner shall get by giving. Here is a parchment[601] given me years ago to read for my mother’s consolation after the death of my brothers. Read it, thou, to the matrons and maidens when the chantings cease.”
 
After a time there was silence! the hush of expectation, for that gathering was wont at times to wait for words of blessing from the missioners, as the hart for the rivulet at the beginnings of the rain.
 
“Read!” whispered Miriamne, “but not as the tragedian! Read as a father and lover, both in one.” The young man complied, and these were the words of the parchment:
 
“There was a man named Jehoikim who, impressed of God thereto, offered a lamb in sacrifice. As he slew it his heart was touched with tenderness, and he would have staid his hand, but God gave him strength to perform the command. After this a daughter, called Mary, was born to him. Whenever he looked upon her gentle face he remembered the bleating lamb, and was certain that some way his child was to be a sacrifice to God. And it was so; for she bore a Son to whom she gave all the wealth of a mother’s love, but at last He was offered for man’s sin upon a felon’s cross, the agony He felt reaching the heart of his mother. As the Son gave Himself up for the world, so she gave herself up for her Son. She was sustained through it all by a conscience void of offense, and by the ministry of angels. Alone to the world, she had no solitude, for though her espousal to God had no human witness, even as Eve’s to Adam had none, and both were inexperienced, God was at her nuptials, as He is ever with those who purely give themselves to Him.”
 
Then the wife wept and was silent.
 
“My darling, what so moves you? I’ve never experienced such a Christmas. You make the feast as solemn as the holy supper.”
 
There came no answer; but ere the husband could turn to seek a reason it came in a cry from the audience,[602] and a thronging from all directions toward where the missioners were.
 
“Miriamne has fallen!”
 
“’Tis a swoon?”
 
“No, ’tis death!” There were surgings back and forth, voices suggesting helps, voices filled with stifled sobs, and voices of fright in the trebles of hysteria.
 
The sick woman was borne by strong men to her domicile, and then began the tension of waiting. The young chaplain was entering the valley of poignant pains by sympathy’s pathway, bound by that mystic chain whose links are in the words: “These twain shall be one flesh.” Herein is a mystery often repeated; the man’s grief was supplemented by a consciousness of vague pains passing along unseen lines from the woman to himself. Slowly Miriamne recovered consciousness; but still she hovered on the confines of woman’s supreme hour, the hour when great fear haunts great hopes, great weakness yields to miraculous influxes of power, and great joy, in company with unutterable yearnings, moves along under the shadows and by the gulfs of greatest perils. About her gathered a group of matrons of her sisterhood, pressing to serve their beloved.
 
One whispered to another: “Her face is unearthly, like Mary’s as we saw it in the ‘Assumption’ to-day.”............