The Mother

SHE CAME wearily into the little northern village, an old woman in the somber dress of a widow. And because her body was bent and worn, because her eyes were filled with an agony of heartbreak, the villagers were kind to her. And they gave her a small empty house in which to rest. . .

SHE CAME wearily into the little northern village, an old woman in the somber dress of a widow. And because her body was bent and worn, because her eyes were filled with an agony of heartbreak, the villagers were kind to her. And they gave her a small empty house in which to rest.

They were kind to her. But then, people were beginning to be kinder, all through the provinces of Palestine. Perhaps it was an out growth, this new gentleness, of the creed that a certain Man had preached. The creed that, not very many years since, a certain Man had died for. When He was living this Man many of the villagers had muttered about Him from be hind carefully raised hands. Many of them had dared to question His origin and the authority by which He taught. But after His crucifixion at the bidding of the cruel ones, they had ceased to mutter. And other stories of resurrection and of a love that had returned from the very throne of God grew in their hearts.

None of the villagers had ever seen Him. His feet had never traveled up the narrow path that led to their small, hilly town. But travelers passing through the market place had spoken of His miracles. Of His tenderness. Of His power over disease. Of His radiant smile. Of His birth in a manger. And there were those among the older villagers who had glimpsed, upon that wintry night long before, the glow of the star that had already come to be a great legend in that country.

And so they were kind to the old woman because kindness had taken deep root in their simple souls. And for a bed they lent her a great blanket of brushed camel's hair. And they gave her flour, more than enough for her frugal baking. And as she went about among them, like a vague shadow, but with pain in every line graven upon her ancient face, they at times pressed a coin or two into her withered palm.

It wasn't long before the old woman was a part of the village life. It wasn't long before people felt that she had dwelt in the small house for many a year. But although she was a part of the scene, she never mingled. Some thing held her remote from the others. She had a way of sitting in her doorway of an evening with her aching eyes upon the dim horizon line. She had a way of going to the village well with such a blind look upon her face that other women tapped their foreheads significantly and stepped out of her path. Seldom did she speak, and when words came to her lips they were only murmured words of gratitude for alms and for food. She seemed almost inarticulate. And yet, for all her speechlessness and though she was very nearly a public charge, there was something rather fine about her.

"Perhaps," said one old crone, gossiping with a neighbor, "she was a great lady once. Who knows?"

And so the matter rested. Until the brown-eyed girl fell fainting on her doorstep of the small cottage and was helped inside that her child might be born upon a borrowed blanket of camel's hair.

The brown-eyed girl too had come to the village months before. But the villagers had not been as kind to her as they had been to the older woman. For the brown-eyed girl had not come somberly clad; she had worn in stead a fluttery gown of scarlet. And her lips were made like a crimson bow against the rich olive of her face. And the wives of the villagers spoke sharply when their little children sought to answer the gaiety of her smile.

The brown-eyed girl had found a lack of welcome in the town. But despite it she had stayed on perhaps for want of a better place to go. And as her hour had approached, her lips had grown less crimson, and the smile of them had faded, just as the fluttery scarlet gown had faded. And when she fell at the woman's doorsill she was like something bright that had been prematurely dulled.

But to the old woman who drew her inside she was suddenly beautiful. For she had come in need and her need had loosened the bonds of a lovely memory.

The child was born, with the bright brown eyes of his mother and a stern little mouth that he must have inherited from his unknown father. And the old woman heating water, warming clothes, making broth looked at him as a desert traveler, dying of thirst, would stare at a mirage. And some thing in the child's crumpled rose petal of a face brought speech to the old lips.

"So pretty, so pretty," she crooned as she bathed the baby. "His little legs, so fat and straight. Oh, but they will travel, in their time. His little hands, reaching after a happiness that he may never find. So pretty, so pretty. As pretty, almost, as my own small son . . ."

To the girl all these words, at first, were only a jumble. The old figure, crouching above her child, laying him against her breast at the appointed times, seemed a phantom. But as the hours passed, as the days went by, the brown-eyed girl began to take notice. For she was strong and young. And she saw that the phantom was an old woman in the shabby dress of a widow. And she discovered that the soft-spoken syllables, quite magically, could attain form and meaning.

"You care for my baby?" she questioned weakly. And then, "Why?"

The old woman's voice was eager. "He is like the child of my own heart," she said, ever so slowly, "like the little son that I bore, many a year gone by."

The brown-eyed girl lay back against the warmth and softness of the camel's-hair blanket. For a long while she struggled with a thought. "You loved him, your son, so much that all other babies are dear to you for his sake. And yet, in your old age, this son has left you to the charity of strangers?"

The old woman was holding the baby against her breast. The baby was drowsy. She rocked it as she answered. "My son is dead," she said dimly. Just that: "My son is dead." And they spoke no more that day.

But as the brown-eyed girl grew stronger her curiosity moved along. And she asked other questions. "Was your son handsome?" she would ask. "Was he clever? Did people like him? Was he a child of charm, a man of learning?"

And to all of these questions the old woman answered, "Yes."

But when the girl asked, "And how did he meet his death?" the old woman shuddered and turned away.

"I cannot tell you," she breathed.--- "I cannot. It was too dreadful too hard." And she said nothing further, but horror lay like a mask over her features.

And then at last came the day when the brown-eyed girl was strong enough to sit in the door way of the cottage, with her sleeping baby across her knees. And as she looked at him, wrapped in a length of white cloth, she for the first time felt the stirrings of maternal pride. And with a slim fore finger she brushed back the downy hair that lay against his moist, tiny forehead. "Were he dressed in fine raiment," said the girl, "he would be as beautiful as a small prince."

The old woman, crouched in the shadows, just beyond the doorway, made answer. And her wrinkled fingers, reaching out, rested for a moment against the girl's arm.

"That shall be my gift to him, my surprise," she said. "It is long since I have been able to bestow a gift. He shall have the infant clothes of my own son. For I have had them out of their wrappings in which I brought them up from my son's birthplace to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem, here. They have been out of their wrappings this many a day. They have been bleaching in the sun, behind the cottage."

And the old woman laid a heap of little garments, fragrant with the fresh air and sunlight, in the girl's lap.

"You would do this for me?" said the girl, close to tears.

But the old woman was far away, in the land of lost dreams. "I put on his first little clothes," she said, "with such love. All through the waiting months I had worked over them. I knew that he would be a son his name was written on my heart ere ever I saw his face. See . . ." Her thin finger was tracing the line of an initial entwined with fine embroideries upon one of the garments. "See."

The brown eyes of the girl misted as she looked down at the exquisite work that the woman's hands had done when they were young, eager hands. And she saw, among small starlike flowers, worked with linen thread against linen, a letter done in the script of the time. And the letter was "J."

When the brown-eyed girl was finally able to leave the cottage, she walked straight down the street that led to the market place. And the people looked at her with amazement when the girl paused suddenly in their midst and began to talk. "I would tell you," she said, quite without preamble, "of a woman dwelling in your midst the woman who befriended me in my time of need. This woman it was who took me in when I was ill and an outcast. I had come to this town because because the father of my child dwelt here. And when he failed to acknowledge me by word or by look---I stayed on, even though friendless, in the hope that my presence would bring to him at least a hidden humiliation."

Again she paused, and when she spoke further, her voice was the voice of one who has named a holy thing. "She it was who brought my son into the world. She it was who nursed me back, as gently as an angel, to health. She it was who, during the hours of my convalescence, talked with me. Of her own son.

"Her son was born to the south of Jerusalem. He was a sweet child. He grew to be a man of great learning. She was proud of him. And then came his death. A death so tragic that it has weakened the mind of her and left her trembling on the edge of madness." She paused. "We have heard of One, born to the south of us, who died in a desperate way. Travelers from afar, men who have passed through Jerusalem, have carried tidings. But there have been no tidings of His kin those nearest to Him. Of their fate.

"The woman gave the swaddling clothes that she had made for her own son many years ago," breathed the girl, and her brown eyes were warm with tears. "You may read for yourselves the initial that is worked into their embroidery. See the little letter lying on my son's heart."

It was one of the elders of the village who bent over the small form of the baby. There was a question in his eyes, a question which ran over the others as the wind plays across a wheat field. "You think," he half whispered, "that . . . ?"

Gravely the girl nodded. "I am sure," she said. "And because I am sure, I am going out, with my child, to lead a new life. To make him worthy of the garments that enfold him. I am going out, alone."

There was a little stir on the out skirts of the crowd. A dark-brown boy with the strong grace of a jungle creature was elbowing his way through the villagers. His stern young mouth was trembling. Straight to the side of the brown-eyed girl he came. "Not alone," he said huskily, as his arm went around her, and the child that she carried in her arms.

One by one the villagers came to the small house that the old woman occupied. She was very lonely now that the brown-eyed girl had gone her way. Her old arms ached with wistfulness be cause the baby no longer filled them. And so, glad of company, she greeted her visitors with a sudden radiance of expression that bewildered them momentarily. They had not thought of her before as a person with a degree of beauty.

They came to her at first on some pretense of neighborliness to leave a fresh-caught fish, a loaf of unleavened bread, a handful of garden spice. They did not question her, all at once. But after a while there were those who grew bolder. "You were not always alone?" they asked, warily. "You had a family, once?"

Eagerly the old woman told them of a baby who had come to bring her joy and happiness. Who had helped, all through the sun light of his boyhood, with the work of his father, and in his mother's home.

"Even as a tiny child," she said, "he spoke so wisely. Many of our friends listened to the words he had to say. And he grew up. Oh" her old voice was a paean of gladness "all over the country men and women looked to him for wisdom and truth. For he was wise and good. But," and her voice quavered, "there came a certain night in Jerusalem. And, oh, the happenings of it pass my understanding. There were lights and there were soldiers that forced their way into the garden. And folks hurried to me and told me that my son . . ." the voice was suddenly a broken thing, "that my son . . ." and then came the bitter tears of old age.

If the old woman felt the change in the attitude of the village she never showed, by word or by look, that she did. Still blinded by the heartache of life, she went to the well. But women who had been quick to tap their foreheads at her passing bowed now instead. Young mothers carried to her their small, teething children and she laid her wrinkled fingers upon the hot little heads and prescribed the simple remedies that all mothers remember, even after their own children have gone away. And girls came to her with their shy first secrets of love, and she patted their hands and listened in a brooding silence. And others came, older people who were feeling the pangs of grief, and went away comforted.

Autumn laid dark fingers across the land. And the woman, in her somber widow's dress, seemed to those who entered her home like a crumpled leaf that clung, through some spiritual force alone, to the tree of life. And though she still sat in her door way, she no longer baked.

But she did not want. For the villagers were glad to serve her. The old woman's cupboard was ever full, and there was always water. And though the old woman's smile was more vague, though her eyes were more dim than be fore, people read gratitude and love into her expression. And one day the woman spoke fleetingly and more clearly than she had ever spoken before.

"When I fled from Jerusalem," she said, "I had planned to go back to the land from which my son and I came. But I grew bewildered, and the caravans that helped me on my way were all northerly bound. And I found myself, without meaning to reach them, upon your quiet streets. I had not dreamed there would ever be such rest for me."

As the winter came, the villagers could tell that her days were numbered. And they did little things that they knew would please her.

And then came the time in the winter which was the anniversary of a star that had hung, years before, above a stable.

Together, the villagers went to ward the small cottage that had come, as well, to be a place of prayer. And as they walked up the slope of the hill, the swift darkness of winter settled over the village. And a first star shone out in the sky. But as they came into the dooryard of the cottage, they heard a feeble cry.

The interior of the little house was dark as the villagers pushed open the door. But someone rubbed flint upon stone, and someone lighted a candle of tallow. And in the feeble glow of it they saw the old woman, sitting upright upon the blanket that made her bed. And her face was the face of the world's greatest grief.

"They came to me and told me of the betrayal," she was saying, "but I would not believe them. They spoke with lying tongues, I thought. He will send word, I kept thinking, to tell me that they are mistaken. Why, there was such affection between the two. But he did not send word. And then they brought news of his death—a death that proved their stories."

Suddenly the old woman fell silent. And it was in her moment of silence that the villagers, released of the awe that held them from her, crowded forward. They laid their gifts at her feet, the gifts of money and carvings and clothing and food. As they surrounded her with the semblance of their love, the anguish was magically swept from her face. And for the only time since she had come among them, she smiled.

"Bless us," cried the brown-eyed girl. "Bless us—Mother." And the other villagers echoed, "Bless us."

But the woman was not smiling at them. For she had gone back through the years, back to her vigorous young womanhood. She was seeing, with eyes grown all at once happy, a long-lost gracious countryside. And she was speaking not to them, but to her son. "The fields of Kerioth are so green," she murmured, "in the springtime." And so strong was her vision that those about her bed almost forgot that winter lay upon the land. "And soon," she went on, "he will be running home."

Then her voice rose in the tone of a mother calling to her child, a tone that was strong and ringing and free of apprehension. Even as her body relaxing, slipped back against the camel's-hair blanket.

"Come home," she called, "come home, my little one, for it is bedtime. Come home," her voice was sinking now to the merest thread of sound. "Come home, Judas, . . . my son."


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May 1975

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