The Mother: A Novel (19 page)

Thus it was with everything. This and that about the house she changed to her own liking, not quickly nor in any temper, but in a small, careful, gradual way, so that it gave the mother no handle to lay her anger on. There was another thing. The young wife did not like the smell of beasts at night, and made complaint, but not to the older woman, only to the man, until he set to work that same winter to add a room to the house where they could move the bed in and sleep alone. And the older woman looked on astonished at such new ways.

At first she said to the blind maid that she would not be angry with the son’s wife. And indeed it was not easy to be angry quickly, for the young wife did well and worked carefully, so that it was hard to say “this is wrong” or “you did not do that well.” But there were things the mother hated somehow, though most she loathed the softened rice and of it she grumbled often and at last aloud, “I never do feel full and fed with such soft stuff. There is naught to set my teeth down on—this watery stuff, it passes my belly like a wind and does not lie like firm good food.” And when she saw her son’s wife pay no heed to this she went secretly to her son one day where he worked in the field and there she said, “Son, why do you not bid her cook the rice more dry and hard? I thought you used to like it so.”

The son stopped his labor then and stayed himself a moment on his hoe and said in his calm way, “I like it as she does it very well.”

Then the mother felt her anger rise and she said, “You did not use to like it so and it means you have joined yourself to her instead of me. It is shameful that you like her so and go against your mother.”

Then the red came flooding into the young man’s face and he said simply, “Aye, I like her well enough,” and fell to his hoe again.

From that day on the mother knew the two were masters in the house. The eldest son was not less kind than usual and he did his work well and took the money into his own hand. It was true he did not spend it, nor did his wife, for the two were a saving pair, but they were man and wife and this their house and land, and to them the mother was but the old woman in the house. It was true that if she spoke of field or seed and of all the labor that she knew so well because it had been hers, they let her speak, but yet when she had finished it was as though she had not spoken, and they made their plans and carried all on as they liked. It seemed to her she was nothing any more, her wisdom less than nothing in the house that had been hers.

Very bitter was it for anyone to bear and when the new room was made and the pair moved into it, the mother muttered to the blind girl who slept beside her, “I never saw such finicking as this, as though the honest smell of beasts was poison! I do swear they made that room so they could be away from us and talk their plans we cannot hear. They never tell me anything. It is not the beasts—it is that your brother loves her shamefully. Yes, they care nothing for you or for your little brother, nor even for me, I know.” And when the girl did not answer she said, “Do you not think so, too, my maid? Am I not right?”

Then the maid hesitated and she said after a while out of the darkness, “Mother, it is true I have something to say I would say and yet I would not, lest it grieve you.”

Then the mother cried out, “Say on, child. I am used to grief, I think.”

And then the maid asked in a small sad voice, “Mother, what will you do with me, blind as I am?”

Now all this time the mother had not thought otherwise than that this maid would live on here with her a while at least and she said in surprise, “What do you mean, my maid?”

And the maid said, “I do not mean my brother’s wife is not kind—she is not cruel, mother. But I think she does not dream you will not wed me soon. I heard her ask my little brother but the other day where I was betrothed, and when he said I was not she said surprised, ‘A great maid to be without a mother-in-law still.’ ”

“But you are blind, child,” said the mother, “and it is not so easy to wed a blind maid.”

“I know it,” said the maid gently. And after a while she spoke again, and this time as though her mouth were very dry and as though her breath came hot. “But you know there are many things I can do, mother, and there may be some very poor man, a widower, perhaps, or some such poor man who would be glad of the little I could do if he need pay nothing for me, and then would I be in my own house and there would be someone if you were gone whom I could care for. Mother, I do not think my sister wants me.”

But the mother answered violently, “Child, I will not have you go to mend some man’s house like that! We are poor, I know, but you can be fed. Widowers are often the hardest and lustiest husbands, child. So go to sleep and think no more of this. Hearty I am yet and likely to live a long full time yet, and your brother was never cruel to you, even as a child.”

“He was not wed then, mother,” said the girl, sighing. But she stayed silent then and seemed to sleep.

But the mother could not sleep a while, although on usual nights she slept deep and sound. She lay there thinking hard, and taking up the days past, one by one, to see if what the girl had said was true, and though she could not think of any single thing, it seemed to her the son’s wife was not warm. No, she was not very warm to the younger lad either, and at least not warm to this blind sister in her husband’s house, and here was new bitterness for the mother to bear.

E
VERY DAY THE MOTHER
watched to see if what the girl had said was true, and it was true. The young wife was not rude, and her words came from her smoothly and with seeming careful courtesy always. But she put upon the maid a hundred little pricks. She gave the blind maid less than her full bowl of food, or so it seemed in the mother’s eyes, and if there were some dainty on the table she did not give her any, and the blind maid, not seeing, did not know it was there. And indeed they would all have let it pass, not heeding in their own hunger, had not the mother’s eyes been sharpened, and she cried out, “Daughter, do you not like this dish of pig’s lungs we have cooked in soup today?”

And when the maid answered gently in surprise, “I did not know we had it, mother, and I like it very well,” then the mother would reach over and with her own spoon dip the meat and soup into the maid’s bowl, and be sure the son’s wife saw the mother do it, and she answered smoothly and courteously, scarcely moving her pale lips that with all their paleness were too thick, too, and she said, “I beg your pardon, sister—I did not see you had none.” But the mother knew she lied.

And sometimes when the son’s wife sewed shoes for the maid, and it was her duty to make shoes for them all, she put no time on the maid’s shoes beyond what she must, and she made the soles thin and spared herself the labor of a flower upon the front, and when the mother saw it she cried, “What—shall my maid not have a little flower such as you have on all your shoes?”

Then the son’s wife opened her little, dark, unshining eyes and said, “I will make them if you say, mother, only I thought since she was blind and could not see a color anyhow—and I have so many to make shoes for, and the younger lad wearing out a pair each month or two with all his running into town to play—”

As for the blind maid who sat there on the threshold in the sun, when she heard this and heard the complaint her sister made against the younger brother, she cried out in mild haste, “Mother, indeed I do not care for the flower, and my sister is right. What are flowers to the blind?”

So it seemed no quarrel and all the many small things seemed no quarrel. Yet one day the eldest son came to his mother, when she went around the house alone to pour some waste into the pig’s hole, and he said, “Mother, I have a thing to say to you, and it is not that I would urge my sister out of the house or grudge her anything. But a man must think of his own, and she is young, mother, and all her life is ahead of her, and shall I feed her all her life? I have not heard it so in any other house, that a man must feed his sister, unless it were some rich house where food is never missed. A man’s duty it is to feed his parents, his wife and his children. But there she is, young and like to live as long as I do, and it will be an ill thing for her, too, if she is not wed. Better for all women to be wed.”

Then the mother looked at her son, her face set in anger against him, and she said, accusing him, “That wife of yours has put this thought into you, my son. You lie there with her alone in that room and there you talk, the two of you, and she poisons you against your own blood with all she says to you in the night. And you—you are like all men—soft as mud in a ditch when you lie in bed with a woman.”

She turned away most bitterly, and she poured the stuff out for the pig and stood and watched it put its snout in and gobble, but she did not really see it, although commonly it was a thing to give her pleasure to see a beast feed heartily. No, she said on in sadness, “And what sort of man will have your sister? Who can we hope will have her save some man too poor for kindness, or a man whose wife is gone and he left and too poor to wed a sound woman again?”

Then the son said hastily, “I think of her, too. I do think of her and I think it is better for her to have a man of her own, even though she cannot have so good a one as though she were whole.”

“This is your wife who speaks, my son,” the mother said more sadly still.

But the man made answer in his stubborn way, “We are of one heart on this,” and when his mother said, “On everything, I fear,” he said no more but went to his fields, silent but unchanged.

Nevertheless the mother willfully would not for long do anything to wed the maid. She told herself and told the maid and told her younger son and her cousin’s wife and any who would listen to her that she was not so old yet she could not have her own way and not so old she had no place in the house and not so old she could be bid like any child to do this or that or what she did not wish to do. She set herself against her son and son’s wife in this and herself she guarded the maid well and saw that nothing was done amiss to her nor that she was deprived of anything the others had.

But as the son’s wife grew more accustomed she grew more plain in speech and more complaining and courtesy dropped from her. She often said now where others heard her or when the women sat together about some door in the sun and sewed in company or had some gathering such as women love, then she said, “What I shall do when children come I do not know, seeing how I have to sew for all these in the house now. My mother grows old and I know it is my duty to do for her and be her eyes and hands and feet and all she needs. I have been taught so, and so I do and I hope I am always careful of my duty. But here this hungry second lad is and he does nothing, and here worse than he, for some day he must wed and his wife will work to feed and clothe him, here is this blind maid not wed and I do wonder if she is to be my care her whole life long, for her mother will not wed her.”

Such words as these she said and others like them and those who heard stared at the blind maid if she were by so that she even felt their gaze and hung her head ashamed to live as such a burden. And sometimes this one spoke or that one and said, “Well and there are many blind and some families teach their blind to tell fortunes or some such thing and earn a penny now and then. Yes, the blind often have an inward seeing eye and they can see things we cannot and their blindness is even a power to them so that other people fear them for it. This maid might be taught to soothsay or some such thing.”

And others said, “But there are poor houses, too, where they have a son and no money to wed him with and they will take a fool or a blind maid or one halt or dumb and count her better than none if they can get her for nothing for their son.”

Then the son’s wife said discontentedly, “I wish I knew some such one, and if you hear of any, neighbors, I would take it for a kindness if you would tell me so.” And being kind they promised the young wife, and they agreed that truly it was hard when money was so scarce and times so poor that she must feed this extra mouth that properly belonged elsewhere.

One day the gossip who was a widow came to the mother and she said, “Goodwife, if you would like to wed that blind maid of yours, I know a family in the hills to the north and they have a son seventeen or so now. They came in famine times from a northern province and they settled on some wild public land not in our village at the mountain’s foot, but up a little higher, and after a while a brother came, and there they live. The land is poor and they are poor, but so be you poor, too, goodwife, and your maid blind, and if you will only pay my going I will go and see to it for you. The truth is I have been minded for this long time to go home and see my own father’s house, but I am loath to ask my husband’s brother for the bit to do it with. A very hard thing is it to be widow in another’s house.”

At first the mother would not listen and she said loudly, “I can tend my own blind maid, goodwife!”

This afterwards she told her cousin’s wife and the cousin too, but the cousin looked grave a while and he said at last, “So could you tend her if you lived forever, sister, but when you are dead, and we dead too, perhaps, or very old and not masters any more before our children save in name, then who will tend her? And what if bad years come and parents must think first of their own children, and you gone?”

Then the mother was silent.

But soon she saw the truth that she could not live forever, at any time her life might end, the sooner, too, perhaps, because she had never had her own old vigor since that secret night.

In the summer of that year a flux came out of the air and laid its hold upon her. Ever she had loved to eat and eat heartily and all she wanted of what there was. But that summer came more than usually hot and there was a mighty pest of flies, so many everywhere that the winds blew them in the food and flies were mingled whether one would have it so or not, and the mother cried out at last to let them be, for there was no use in killing them and it was but a waste of time so many more came after. It was a summer, too, of great watermelons that when they were split showed darkly red or clear and yellow as their sort was, and never had there been a better year for melons than was that.