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Page 7
Of the distance he climbed his thought took no cognizance. There was in
this vision neither distance nor time. There was only faint radiance,
far, strange sounds, and the breathing of air which made him feel an
ecstasy of lightness as he moved. The other Zia had traveled painfully,
had stumbled and struck his feet against wayside stones. He seemed ten
thousand miles, ten thousand years away. It was not he who went to
Bethlehem, led as if by some power invisible. To Bethlehem! To
Bethlehem, where went the woman whose blue robe was bordered with a glow
of fair luminousness and whose face, like an uplifted lily, softly
shone. It was she he followed, knowing no reason but that his soul was
called.
When he reached the little town and stood at last near the gateway of
the khan in which the day-long procession of wayfarers had crowded to
take refuge for the night, he knew that he would find no place among the
multitude within its walls. Too many of the great Caesar's subjects had
been born in Bethlehem and had come back for their enrolment. The khan
was crowded to its utmost, and outside lingered many who had not been
able to gain admission and who consulted plaintively with one another as
to where they might find a place to sleep, and to eat the food they
carried with them.
Zia had made his way to the entrance-gate only because he knew the
travelers he had followed would seek shelter there, and that he might
chance to hear of them.
He stood a little apart from the gate and waited. Something would tell
him what he must do. Almost as this thought entered his mind he heard
voices speaking near him. Two women were talking together, and soon he
began to hear their words.
"Joseph of Nazareth and Mary his wife," one said. "Both of the line of
David. There was no room for them, even as there was no room for others
not of royal lineage. To the mangers in the cave they have gone, seeing
the woman had sore need of rest. She, thou knowest--"
Zia heard no more. He did not ask where the cave lay. He had not needed
to ask his way to Bethlehem. That which had led him again directed his
feet away from the entrance-gate of the khan, past the crowded court and
the long, low wall of stone within the inclosure of which the camels and
asses browsed and slept, on at last to a pathway leading to the gray of
rising rocks. Beneath them was the cave, he knew, though none had told
him so. Only a short distance, and he saw what drew him trembling
nearer. At the open entrance, through which he could see the rough
mangers of stone, the heaps of fodder, and the ass munching slowly in a
corner, the woman who wore the blue robe stood leaning wearily against
the heavy wooden post. And the soft light bordering her garments set her
in a frame of faint radiance and glowed in a halo about her head.
"The light! the light!" cried Zia in a breathless whisper. And he
crossed his hands upon his breast.
Her husband surely could not see it. He moved soberly about, unpacking
the burden the ass had carried and seeming to see naught else. He heaped
straw in a corner with care, and threw his mantle upon it.
"Come," he said. "Here thou canst rest, and I can watch by thy side. The
angels of the Lord be with thee!" The woman turned from the door and
went toward him, walking with slow steps. He gazed at her with mild,
unillumined eyes.
"Does he not see the light!" panted Zia. "Does he not see the light!"
Soon he himself no longer saw it. Joseph of Nazareth came to the wooden
doors and drew them together, and the boy stood alone on the mountain-
side, trembling still, and wet with the dew of the night; but not weary,
not hungered, not athirst or afraid, only quaking with wonder and joy--
he, the little hunchback Zia, who had known no joy before since the hour
of his birth.
He sank upon the earth slowly in an exquisite peace--a peace that
thrilled his whole being as it stole over his limbs, deepening moment by
moment. His head drooped softly upon a cushion of moss. As his eyelids
fell, he saw the splendor of whiteness floating in the height of the
purple vault above him.
The dawn was breaking and yet the stars had not faded away. This was his
thought when his eyes first opened on a great one, greater than any
other in the sky, and of so pure a brilliance that it seemed as if even
the sun would not be bright enough to put it out. It hung high in the
paling blue, high as the white radiance; and as he lay and gazed, he
thought it surely moved. What new star was it that in that one night had
been born? He had watched the stars through so many desolate hours that
he knew each great one as a friend, and this one he had never seen
before.
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