There it was, and there was no help for it. No use blaming oneself for one’s disbelief, belief was there or it was not there; it could not be commanded. He wished with all his heart that it could be. Because he loved her; he wished he could have given her the answer she wanted. He loved her so much that he wished she had come to tell him that she preferred another man. That, he felt, he could have borne. What he resented—he was facing facts now—was the fact that she had tried to deceive him.
She wasn’t stupid; that was one of the things that had attracted him to her. Other women went to the Synagogue and, if they were young, clattered their bracelets and looked covertly at young men from the edges of their veils and thought their young, silly thoughts; if they were older they were glad of a chance to be at peace and rest for a moment, or watched how their children behaved. She had listened and remembered; and today had tried to use what she had learned.
And yet, and yet, trying to dismiss her as a light, deceptive creature, he could not forget her calm, the dignity and assurance of her last words.
Suddenly he thought—Poor girl, how she will suffer! The thought of it, and the wine he had drunk, made him break out into a sweat. If he repudiated her, what would they do, Anne and Joachim, so respectable, so orthodox? Hide her away, say she was ill, smuggle the baby away the moment it was born and put it out to nurse somewhere far away? Anne was sharp-tongued, Joachim, if displeased—Joseph had once or twice seen him so—sullen and surly. What a terrible life, the poor girl would have. And as he thought of that the last alternative presented itself, and even as he entertained it he knew that it was
somethingthat only a pot-valient fellow would consider.
Why not marry her?
He loved her and she needed him. Why make all this coil about what you believed and what you didn’t believe, and God and the prophets ? If she had been frail, all the more reason why he should be strong. And he wouldn’t, by any means, be the first man to rear another man’s child and grow to be fond of it.
She was very sweet and very innocent; somebody had taken advantage of that sweetness and innocence; and she, in turn, had tried to take advantage of him. But that was because he was her only hope. She had agreed to marry him, and he owed her something for that. And he realised that he was, compared to her, old, and a very unromantic kind of fellow. He looked back on his own youth, remembering its fancies and its passions, its moments of ecstasy; it would ill become him to sit in judgement…. Yes, he thought; he’d marry her, because he loved her, because he was sorry for her and because it was the easiest way out for all. And if by some fantastic chance her story should be true, and nine months from now she bore a baby with … Exactly how would the Messiah be born? With wings? With a crown on his head, a sword in his hand? With a countenance of such shining glory that no man could look on it?
How very peculiar that none of the prophets had given the slightest information about that. Dream-ridden, impractical men, they’d spoken of a conception without sin, and of a virgin birth. It had been left to a carpenter in Nazareth, an ordinarily sober fellow who had missed his supper and drunk more in an hour than he ordinarily did in half a year, to ask—How?
He said to himself, Man, you’re tipsy I Get to your bed.
But, tipsy or sober, credulous or incredulous, he had decided to marry her; and for that he was always to be thankful. In his ordinary, human, unenlightened state he had, from love and pity, made his decision.
He lay down, and fell asleep. And presently the low dark room was filled with a golden light, and there was the sound of music, and the sweet scent of flowers. There too, exactly as Mary had described, was the angel, a dazzle of whiteness and beauty with great wings, and a lily in his hand. Gabriel!
He would have risen, would have fallen to his knees, but he was paralysed.
“Joseph, thou son of David,” Gabriel said, ‘fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” If he could have spoken then Joseph would have said that he had already decided; but awe held him speechless.
“She shall bring forth a son, and thou shall call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins.”
Then it was dark again, and silent. The night wore away and in the dawn Joseph woke.
Very often, he knew, dreams were conjured up out of what had happened during one’s waking hours; twisted, sometimes almost unrecognisable, but you could, if you gave your mind to it, find the link. It did not seem to him unduly marvelous that he should have seen,“in a dream, an angel exactly as Mary had described him, even to the lily. But there was one thing about this dream that could not have been the product of anything he had been told or imagined. That final phrase—‘from their sins’. That was, and the sensible, practical carpenter recognised the fact, something new, something he could never have imagined or dreamed. Messiah, when he came, was, by common belief, to save his people from their conquerors; he was to re-establish the throne of David, justify and reinstate a proud people. But Gabriel had said ‘for he shall save his people from their sins’, and that was such an original, revolutionary idea that it could only have come direct from God.
And although the idea that God, the one and only God, had through a dream communicated directly with him, the village carpenter, just as He had communicated with specially chosen people in the past, in the once-upon-a-time, Joseph felt curiously calm. He now understood Mary’s attitude on the previous evening.
“Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.”
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” The certainty was like a rock. Yet, as over even the most solid rock, a climbing plant may
throw its comparatively unimportant growth, over thecertainty there were the purely human considerations; he must get to Mary and assure her; he must make arrangements for hastening on the wedding.
The village was hardly stirring when he walked to her house. The door was still closed and he knocked on it. Mary opened it -and her face, already pale, whitened when she saw him. He took a step backward and signed to her to follow him.
“Have you told them?” he asked in a low voice.
She shook her head. She had come home, feeling forsaken of God, and thinking that she must tell them, the sooner the better, and found them both busy, preparing the eggs that her father would, in the morning, take into the market at Sepphoris. Anne, with a damp cloth, was wiping each egg clean from the clawmarks, the dung, the bits of nesting chaff, and Joachim, taking them one by one, was holding each egg against the candlelight. To sell an egg with an embryo chick in it, or with a blood spot or a meat spot, would be to lose custom. In Sepphoris ordinary housewives, or the slaves who bought for bigger households, must always be able to say, “The eggs we buy from Joachim are always fresh.”
She’d stood there for a moment, visualising what would happen if she suddenly gave them the news. She’d tried Joseph the one to whom, mentally and emotionally, she was closest and he had not believed her. So from her parents she had turned away and gone to bed.
Tm glad of that,” Joseph said, in answer to her shaking of the head.
“I’ve come to ask you a great favour.” He was aware that in the shadowy room behind the open door somebody was moving, listening, alert. He raised his voice a little.
“I know weddings and the preparations for them mean a great deal to brides and their mothers. But Cana is seven miles away, I have to leave early and I get back late. I’m tired of coming home to a dead hearth, tired of making my own breakfast.. ..” Whoever moved in the shadow had come nearer, was listening intently.
“The day after tomorrow,” he said, ‘is the day for weddings. I’ve come to ask you, Mary, to marry me then, instead of two months hence.”
Even had he not had his dream her face would have been sufficient justification. Joy, gratitude, wonder, completely transfigured it. He had thought it over, he believed it.