The Green Bough

by E. Temple Thurston

Only Mary amongst them all sat now with heart and mind attentive to what he said, pursuing not the meaning he intended to convey, but a train of thought, the sudden illumination of an idea which yet she dared not find words in her consciousness to express.

"We must think of her," the Vicar continued, "as a woman passing through the hours of her travail. We must think of her brought in secret haste by the fear of consequence and the expedience of necessity to that manger in Bethlehem, where, upon her bed of straw, with the cattle all about her in their stalls, she gave birth to a man child in all the suffering and all the pain it is the lot of women to endure. For here is the origin of that manhood in which we must place our faith if we are to appreciate the fullness of sacrifice our Savior made upon the Cross. It was a woman, as any one of you, who was the mother of Our Lord. A woman, blessed above all women to be the link between the divinity of God the Father and the manhood of God the Son. It was a woman who had found favor in the eyes of her Creator, such favor as had sought her out to be the instrument of the will and mercy of God.

"And the Angel said unto her--'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.'"

So often had Mary's name been repeated that by now no association was left in Fanny's mind with her sister. She turned and looked at her no more. But to Mary herself, with this last reiteration of all, the sound of it throbbed in every vein and beat in violent echoes in her heart. For now no longer could she keep back the conscious words that sought expression of those thoughts in her mind. She knew beyond concealment the idea which had forced itself in a suspicion upon her acceptance.

In all his eagerness to lead their minds away from worship of the Virgin Mary, the Vicar had destroyed for her every shred of that mystery it had been his earnest intention to maintain. Now indeed it seemed she did understand and nothing was left that lay beyond her comprehension.

It was the woman, as he had urged them, whom she saw, the woman on her bed of straw, with that look in the eyes, the look of a woman waiting for her hour which often she had seen in the eyes of others it had been her duty to visit in Bridnorth. It was the woman, eager and suffering, with that eagerness she sometimes had felt as though it were a vision seen within herself. He had substituted a woman--just such a woman it might be as herself.

And here it was then that the thought leapt upon her like some ambushed thing, bearing her down beneath its weight; beating at her heart, lacerating her mind so that she knew she never in any time to come could hide from herself the scars it made.

"If she had suffered," Mary asked herself--"must she not also have known?" And then, shaking her with the terror of its blasphemy, there sprang upon her mind the words--

"Who was the father of the Son of Man?"

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost!" a voice intoned in a far distance and with all the others she rose automatically to her feet. Her eyes were glazed. She scarcely could see the Vicar as he descended from the pulpit. Her heart was thumping in her breast. She could hear only that.