Mary: The Queen of the House of David and Mother of Jesus / The Story of Her Life

by A. Stewart Walsh

“Will he think me cowardly and stony-hearted?” Resolution was being assailed, and weakened. The questionings increased in number and imperiousness: “What if to-night we are all to perish?” Then she let imagination take the rein. She thought of a scene that might be if she and her beloved were as betrothed, soon to be wed, lovers. In the scene she fancied herself, her lover and her father all together in a last embrace, going down into the yawning waves. “Would my lover try to save me?” For the moment there were two of her again, and it was the one that awhile ago laughed so merrily, that now seemed to be saying: “Would my lover try to save me?” The one self heard the question, and by silence, without sign of rebuke, seemed to give the other self plenary indulgence. Then came a free play of her imagination. She saw herself lying in coral palaces, beneath the moaning waves of the Mediterranean, still clasping her lover and her parent. Then she thought of how her friends would receive the news of her demise. Perhaps some poet would embalm the event in deathless poems, and thousands read of the three that perished side by side. Her mind ran back to London. She imagined a memorial service at the chapel of the Palestineans and the Grand Master there saying: “Miriamne de Griffin was lost at sea; in the path of glorious duty, loyally pursued to the end.”

Then she thought of Bozrah and the old stone house, with her mother and her brothers, its sole occupants; the mother in mourning garbs, her spirit subdued, and she often tenderly saying to the fatherless, sisterless boys, “Miriamne was a good girl, a faithful daughter, a noble woman.”

But after all, these excursions were unsatisfactory to the young woman. And naturally so. When she thought of lying a corpse, with weed-winding sheets, for years, in the caves of the sea, she was repelled. Thoughts of her memorials, possibly to transpire at London and Bozrah, were not very comforting. She was too young, too free from morbidness, too deeply enamored, to court, assiduously, posthumous honors.

Then came thought of a wreck and rescue, and it was very welcome. It grew out of the possibility of the youth she loved and she alone, of all on board, being saved. She thought of drifting about for days on a raft! Would she recall her resolutions and his, or would he say to her: “Miriamne, I saved you from the deep; now you are mine entirely and forever!” Would she believe his claim paramount? Would duty’s requirements be satisfied? Then she was as two again. One voice said ‘yes,’ and the other did not concur, neither did it gainsay. She could not pronounce a verdict and there were tears flowing.

The storm grew stronger, but the laboring ship rose and fell on the billows at intervals, and she was lulled to sleep. Her last thoughts, as she passed into dreamland, were that it would have been a useless pain, both endured, if now they were to be lost; the pain of determining, as they had, to live apart. As she so thought she wished almost that they had not resolved as they had. Conscience and desire were in their ceaseless warfare. Then sleeping brought a dream of joy, the blessing that comes often to the heart that is clean. The dream was colored by events preceding.

Cornelius had reminded her the day before, as they were sailing along the coast of Cyprus, that, at Paphos, on that island, there was once a temple to Venus, the fabled goddess of love. That divinity, surrounded by multitudes paying her homage, came before the dreamer’s mind in all those ravishing splendors of person that are so attractive to human desires. Around the goddess, and very close to her, were hosts of young men and maidens, their actions as boisterous and ecstatic as those intoxicated. Outside of the throngs of youths were others older: and outside of these were others still; those far away from the goddess, seemingly bowed with years. The company of youths was constantly increased by new arrivals who crowded back those there before them.

But there was a depletion as well as augmenting of the vast, surging congregation; for anon, as if mad, some nearest the deity rushed away, both of the men and the maidens, nor did those fleeing stop until they found violent deaths by leaping from cliffs or into the sea.

Then the ancients, crowded continually back by the new arrivals, one after another, with expressions of disappointment and disgust on their features, seemed to melt away into a surrounding forest of trees that were very black and very like shadows. The dreamer in her dream betook herself to prayer that the God of mercy might change what she saw.

Then she beheld the Paphian goddess in all the splendor of her form, a perfect triumph of nature, just as depicted by bard and painter, looking out contemptuously, pitilessly, toward her former votaries, now aged and pushed aside. There came then a voice as if from above: “God is love.”

Immediately on the face of the divinity there was an expression as of terror, and she began sinking. Before the mind of the dreamer, the beautiful creature, and her retinue of nude, bold-faced attendants, with all that appertained to them and their queen went down, ingulfed in a foaming, roaring whirlpool. As they went down lightnings from above shot after them. And the dreamer looked aloft to see from whence the voice and the lightning came. As she gazed upward she saw a man of noble form, reverently bowing, as a son might bow in the presence of a mother revered and loved, before a woman of noble mien and beautiful beyond all compare.