The Mother: A Novel (20 page)

Now well the mother loved this fruit, and she ate heartily of all such as could not be sold or such as grew too ripe suddenly beneath the sun, and she ate on and on and when she was filled, she ate yet more to keep the things from being wasted. Whether it was the many melons or whether some wicked wind caught her or whether someone laid a curse upon her, although she did not know of one who really hated her unless it were that little goddess who had guessed her sin, or what it was she did not know. But the flux came on her and it dragged her very inwards out and she lay ill for days, purged and retching up so much as a mouthful of tea she swallowed to stay herself if she could.

In these days when she was so racked and weak the son’s wife did all well and everything she knew to do for her husband’s mother’s sake, nor was she lacking in any small duty. The blind maid strove to do her poor best too for her mother, but she was slow and could not see a need in time, and often the son’s wife pushed the maid aside and said, “Do you sit down somewhere, good sister, and out of my way, for I swear you are the most help so!”

Even against her will then did the mother come to lean, in all her weakness, on this quick and careful younger woman, and she was too weak to defend her blind maid, and the younger son these days came but sometimes to see how she did and went away again somewhere because his mother was too weak to say a word for him against his brother. In such weakness it was a strength to the mother to feel the young wife deft and careful about her bed. When at last the flux passed out of her and to some other person destined for it, and the mother rose at last, she leaned hard upon her son’s wife, though she did not love her either, but only needed her.

It took the mother very long to come somewhat to herself again, and she was never wholly sound again. She could not eat the rough cabbages she loved, nor any sort of melon nor the peanuts she had liked to chew raw from the ground when they were dug, and ever after this she had to think what she ate, to see how it suited itself to her inwards, and if she grew impatient with such finicking and cried out that she would eat what she would and liked and her belly must bear it, why, then the flux came back again. Or even if she worked too hard or sat in any small cold wind that evil illness waited for her and made her helpless for a while again.

Then in her helplessness she saw the blind maid must be wed into some house of her own, for it was true she was not welcome here. When the mother was too weak to cry against it, she saw the maid was ill at ease there and felt herself unwanted, and one day the maid came herself at a moment when her mother was alone and she said, “Mother, I cannot stay here in my brother’s house. Oh, mother, I think I would sooner be wed anywhere so that I could be somewhere I was wanted!”

Then the mother said no more against it. She comforted her daughter with a word or two and one day in the winter of that year when she felt stronger than she had, for ever after she was better in the cold than in the heat, she went and sought the gossip out. There the old gossip sat in her doorway, stitching flowers still upon a bit of cloth, although her thread was very coarse these days and the edge of the flowers she made a thing to laugh at for she could not see as once she had, although she would not say she could not, and when the mother found her she said wearily, “What you said was true. I see my maid would be better wed and let it be to that one you know, for I am too weary to look here and there, and always weary somehow nowadays since that flux took me a year or two agone.”

Then the old gossip was glad to have something new to do that cost her nothing and she hired a barrow and on it rode the ten miles or so to the valley where her father’s house had been and to the village, and there she stayed a day or two and more. On the night when she returned she went to the mother’s house and called her out alone to the corner of the house and whispered, “The thing went very well, goodwife, and in a month it can be finished. Well, and I am very weary, too, but still I remember I did it all for you, goodwife, and we are old friends now.”

Then the woman took from her bosom a piece of silver she had kept there for this hour and she pressed it on the gossip. But the gossip pushed her hand away and swore she would not have it and it was not needful between two friends and she said this and that but had it in the end.

When all was done and the woman thought it well, or tried to, she told the son’s wife, and the son’s wife was pleased and showed it, although she took care to say, “You need not have hastened so, mother, for I bear the maid no ill will and she may stay here a year or two for all of me, and I would not mind if it were even all her life, if it were not we are so poor we must count the mouths we feed.”

But she was more kindly for the while and she offered of her own will to sew new garments for the maid, three in all, a new coat and trousers of dark blue and some red trousers for her wedding day, as even the poorest maid must have, and besides these a pair of shoes or two, and on the shoes she made a little flower and leaf in red. But they made no great wedding day of it nor any great ado, since the maid was given free and there were no gifts given because she was not good bargain for the man she was to wed.

As for the maid, she said nothing of the day. She listened when her mother told her what was done and she said nothing save once in the night she put out her hand to feel her mother’s face near her, and she whispered to her mother suddenly, “Mother, but is it too far for you to come and see me sometimes and how I do there? I am so blind I cannot come to you so far along a road I do not know and over hills and valleys.”

Then the mother put out her hand too and she felt the maid trembling and she wept secretly and wiped her tears in the darkness on the quilt and she said over and over, “I will come, my maid, be sure and I will come, and when I come you shall tell me all and if they do not treat you well I will see to it heartily. You shall not be treated ill.” And then she said most gently, “But you have lain sleepless all this night.”

And the maid answered, “Yes, and every night a while.”

“But you need not be afraid, child,” the mother answered warmly. “You are the best and quickest blind maid I ever saw, and they know you blind and they cannot blame you for it nor say we hid it from them.”

But long after the maid had fallen into light sleep at last the mother lay and blamed herself most heavily, for somehow she felt some wrong within herself that laid its punishment upon the maid, though how she did not know, only she wished she had been better. And she blamed herself lest if by any chance she should have found a nearer place to wed her maid, a village where she could go each month or so, or even found a poor man willing to move to the hamlet for a little price that she could promise. Yet even when she thought of this she groaned within her heart and doubted that her son and son’s wife would have spared even this small price, for they kept the money now. So she thought most heavily, “Yet I cannot hope she will never be beaten. Few houses be there like ours where neither man nor his mother will beat a maid new come. And it would tear my heart so, and so grieve me if I saw my blind maid beaten or even if it was done near enough so I could hear of it, or so the maid could run home and tell me, and I helpless once she is wed, that I think I could not bear it. Better far to have her where I cannot see her and where I cannot know and so be saved the pain because I cannot see and so can hope.”

And after she had lain a while more and felt how heavy life lay on her she thought of one thing she could do, and it was that she could give the maid some silver coins for her own, as her own mother had done when she left home. So in the darkness before dawn she rose and moving carefully not to stir the beasts and fowls and frighten them she went to her hole and smoothed away the earth and took out the bit of rag she kept the little store in and opened it and chose out five pieces of silver and thrust them in her bosom and covered the hole again. Then with the silver in her bosom a little comfort came and she thought to herself, “At least it is not every maid who comes from a poor house with a little store of silver. At least my maid has this!”

And holding fast on this small comfort she slept at last.

Thus the days passed and none joyfully. No, the woman took no joy even in her youngest son and cared little whether he came and went except she saw that he was well and smiling with some business of his own she did not know. So the day came at last when the maid must go and the woman waited with the heaviest heart to see what was the one who came to fetch her. Yes, she strained her heart to understand what sort of man it was who came and fetched her maid away.

It was a day in early spring he came, before the year had opened fully so that spring was only seen in a few hardy weeds the children in the village digged to eat and in a greenish tinge along the willow twigs and the brown buds on the peach trees scarcely swollen yet. All the lands lay barren still with winter, the wheat not growing yet and but small spears among the clods, and the winds cold.

On this day one came, an old man riding on a gray ass without a saddle and sitting on an old and filthy ragged coat folded under him upon the beast’s back. He came to the house where the mother was and gave his name. Her heart stopped then in her bosom, for she did not like the way this old man looked. He grinned at her and shaped his lips to be kind, but there was no kindness in the sharp old fox’s face, sharp eyes set in deep wrinkles, a few white hairs about a narrow lipless mouth curved down too long to smile with any truth this day. He wore garments well-nigh rags, too, not patched or clean, and when he came down from his ass there was no common courtesy in his manner, such as any man may have whether he be learned or not. He came limping across the threshing-floor, one leg too short to match the other, his old garments tied about him at the waist, and he said roughly, “I am come to fetch a blind maid. Where is she?”

Then the mother said, for suddenly she hated this old man, “But what pledge have you that you are the one to have her?”

The old man grinned again and said, “I know that fat goodwife who came to tell us we might have the maid for nothing for my brother’s son.”

Then the woman said, “Wait until I call her.” And she sent her younger lad who lounged about the house that day, and the old gossip came as quickly as her old legs would bear her and she stared at the man and laughed and shouted, “Aye, it is the uncle of the lad she is to wed. How are you, goodman, and have you eaten yet this day?”

“Aye,” said the old man grinning and showing all his toothless gums, “but not too well I swear.”

All this time the mother looked at him most steadfastly and then she cried out bluntly to the gossip, “I do not like the looks of this! I thought better than this for my maid!”

And the gossip answered loudly laughing, “Goodwife, he is not the bridegroom—his nephew is as soft and mild a lad as ever you did see.”

By now the cousin’s wife was come too and the son and son’s wife and the cousin came and others from the hamlet and they all stood and stared at this old man and it was true that to all he was no good one for looks and ways of any kindness. Yet was the promise given, and there were those who said, “Well, goodwife, you must bear in mind the maid is blind.”

And the son’s wife said, “The thing is set and promised now, mother, and it is hard now to refuse, for it will bring trouble on us all if you refuse.” And when he heard her say this her husband kept his silence.

The woman looked piteously at her cousin then, and he caught her look and turned his eyes away and scratched his head a while, for he did not know what to say. He was a simple good man himself and he did not trust too much this old man’s looks either; still it is hard to say sometimes if poverty and evil are the same thing, and it might be his ragged garments made him look so ill, and it was hard to say nay when all the thing was set and done, and so not knowing what to say he said nothing and turned his head away and picked up a small straw and chewed on it.

But the gossip saw her honor was in danger and she said again and again, “But this is not the bridegroom, goodwife,” and at last she called, for it would shame her much if the thing were not done now, “Old man, your brother’s son is soft as any babe, is he not?”

And the old man grinned and nodded and laughed a meager laugh and said, wheezing as he spoke with laughter, “Aye, soft as any babe he is, goodwife!” And at last he said impatiently, “I must be gone if I am to fetch her home by night!”

So not knowing what else to do, the mother set her maid upon the ass’s back at last, the maid garbed in her new garments, and the mother pressed into her hand the little packet of silver and whispered quickly, “This is for your own, my maid, and do not let them have it from you.” And as the old man kicked the ass’s legs to set it going the mother cried aloud in sudden agony, “I will come, my maid, before many months are past and see how they do treat you there, and keep all in your heart and tell me then. I shall not fear to bring you home again, my maid, if aught is wrong.”

Then the blind maid answered through her dry and trembling lips, “Yes, mother, and that cheers me.”

But the mother could not let her child go yet and she cast here and there desperately in her mind to think of some last thing to say and hold her yet a little longer, and she cried out to the old man, clinging to her maid, “My maid is not to feed the fire, old man,—she shall not feed the fire, for it hurts her eyes—the smoke—”

The old man turned and stared and when he understood he grinned and said, “Oh, aye, well, let it be so—I’ll tell them—” and kicked the beast again and walked beside it as it went.

So the maid went away, and she held her sign of blindness in her hand, and had her little roll of garments tied behind her on the ass’s back. The mother stood and watched her go, her heart aching past belief, tears welling from her eyes, and this although she did not know what else she could have done. So she stood still until the hill rose between and cut the child from her sight and she saw her no more.