Two from Galilee by Marjorie Holmes Page A

nature, and by that giving his heartbreak away. Poor Abner. And poor Cleophas, who had gone off to console himself in Magdala, she had learned. She grieved for them, yet always her being turned back to Joseph. He was the only one she had ever wanted, and he was hers. Hers by law. If he were to die she would be his widow. And if she were to die he would be her widower. And if she were to betray him he would have to give her a bill of divorcement.
    But no—no, how could she entertain such thoughts on this night of her betrothal when the moon was shining for good luck? It was still fairly early; the working people of Nazareth could not spend much of the night in celebration, for they had to rise at dawn. The moon was still so bright they had scarcely needed torches going home. It was flooding her little room and she couldn't bear it, this restlessness, fed by the moonlight.
By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not.
    I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth. . . .
    She found herself at the window. The moon possessed the sky. It traced every tree and twig and bush and branch in silver, laying inky shadows, giving everything a stark clarity seldom seen by day. "Joseph. Joseph!" she whispered toward that blandly smiling and triumphant face. Was he sleepless too, perhaps pacing alone in this unutterable light, or gazing up in a frenzy of longing? And all because she had indeed set forth on the streets like the bride in Solomon's dream:
. . . but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. . . .
    My dove, my perfect one, is only one, the darling of her mother. . . .
    Hannah. Poor brave beaten little Hannah, who had been finally reconciled. Who slept in the next room by her husband's side. While the bride . . . the groom? Mary shuddered and pressed her hands to her breasts.
    "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse" Joseph had gone on singing from those selfsame songs, "a spring shut up, a fountain sealed."
    Joseph. Joseph. She gave herself over to the final memory, held back to savor utterly. The moment in the garden when both her mother and father had been busy with the guests and they two had drawn a little apart. He had gripped both her hands within his own. "Would to heaven this were our wedding night!"
    "Yes. Yes," she whispered, swaying toward him. "But we must be patient, and it won't be long, I promise. Just as I persuaded my father before, I'll surely be able to persuade him not to postpone the wedding for long."
    Yet even as they gazed at each other in the nakedness of their yearning, she had begun to shrink from the task ahead. Having yielded thus far, her parents might feel it a point of honor not to yield again. Besides, they loved her, she was their firstborn. She knew that they would keep her with them as long as possible.
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VII
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    JOACHIM saw his daughter now with a dumb aching resignation. It was done. Her spirit had fled the house, she belonged to another, so let her go, let her go. His wife, however, was adamant. The wedding would be in the fall, shortly after the Feast of the Tabernacles, and not a moment before.
    "It will take Joseph at least that long to finish a proper house. Otherwise you would have to move in with his family."
    "You did," Mary reminded.
    "Yes, and a sorry day that was." Hannah's needle stabbed the cloth she was stitching. Her face was determined. She knew that she was wounding Joachim with her words, but so be it. It was necessary these days to wound someone in order to ease her own constant sense of defeat and loss. Mary had won, she was going to marry the man she wanted, just as she had always gotten nearly everything else from Joachim. Now it gave Hannah a queer, fierce delight to have her way in the matter of the