When the beans she had planted in the field were come to flower and the
winds were full of their fragrance and when the valley was yellow with
the blooming of the rape they grew for the oil they pressed from its
seeds, the mother gave birth to her fourth child. There was no midwife
for hire in that small hamlet as there might be in a city or town or
even in a larger village, but women helped each other when the need
came, and there were grandmothers to say what to do if aught went wrong
and a child came perversely or if there was anything in a birth to
astonish a young woman. But the mother was well made, not too small or
slight, and loosely knit and supple in the thighs, and there was never
anything wrong with her. Even when she had fallen and dropped her child
too soon, she did it easily, and it was little to her save the pity of
a child lost and her trouble for naught.
In her time she called upon their cousin’s wife, and when the cousin’s
wife needed it, she did the same for her. So now upon a sweet and windy
day in spring the woman felt her hour on her and she went across the
field and set her hoe against the house and she called out to the
house across the way and the cousin’s wife came running, wiping her
hands on her apron as she came, for she had been washing clothes at
the pond’s edge. This cousin’s wife was a kindly, good woman, her face
round and brown and her nostrils black and upturned above a big red
mouth. She was a noisy, busy soul, talking the livelong day beside her
silent man, and now she came bustling and laughing and shouting as she
came, “Well, goodwife, I do ever say how good a thing it is that we do
not come together. I have been watching you and wondering which would
come first, you or I. But I am slower somehow this year than I thought
to be, and you are bearing and I but just begun!”
Her voice came out big and loud when she said this, for it was her way,
and women hearing called from other houses and they said gaily, “Your
hour is it, goodwife? Well, luck then, and a son!” And one who was a
widow and a gossip called out mournfully, “Aye, make the most of your
man while you have him, for here be I, a good bearing woman too, and no
man any more!”
But the mother answered nothing. She smiled a little, pale under the
dust and the sweat upon her face and she went into the house. The old
woman followed after chattering and laughing in her pleasure in the
hour, and she said, “I ever said when my hour used to come, and you
know I bore nine children in my time, daughter, and all good sound
children until they died, and I ever said--”
But the mother did not hear. She took a little stool and sat down
without speaking anything and smoothed the rough hair from her face
with her two hands and her hands were wet with sweat--not the sweat of
the fields, but this new sweat of pain. And she took up the edge of her
coat and wiped her face, and she uncoiled her thick long hair and bound
it fresh and firm. Then the pain caught her hard, and she bent over
silently, waiting.
Beside her the old woman clacked on and the cousin’s wife laughed at
her, but when she saw the mother bend like this she ran and shut the
door, and stood to wait. But suddenly there came a beating on the door
and it was the boy. He saw the door closed in the day and his mother
inside and he was afraid and he set up a cry and would have the door
opened. At first the mother said, “Let him be there so that I may have
peace at this task,” and the cousin’s wife went to the door and bawled
through the crack, “Stay there for a while for your mother is at her
task!” And the old woman echoed, “Stay there, my little one, and I will
give you a penny to buy peanuts if you will play well and you shall see
what your mother will have for you in a little while!”
But the boy was afraid to see the door shut in the daytime and would
have his way, and the girl began to whimper too as she did when her
brother cried and she came feeling her way and beat too upon the door
with her puny fists, and at last the mother grew angry in her pain and
the more angry because it bore her down so hard, and she rose and
rushed out and cuffed the boy heartily and shouted at him, “Yes, and
you do wear my life away and you never heed a thing that is said, and
here is another to come just like you, I do swear!”
But the instant she had beat him her heart grew soft and the anger in
her was satisfied and went out of her and she said more gently, “But
there, come in if you must, and it is nothing to see, either.” And she
said to the cousin’s wife, “Leave the door a little open, for they feel
shut out from me, and they are not used to it.”
Then she sat down again and held her head in her hands and gave herself
silently to her pains. As for the boy, he came in and seeing nothing,
but feeling his father’s cousin’s wife look at him hard as if he had
done some ill thing, he went out again. But the little girl came in
and sat down on the earthen floor beside her mother and held her hands
against her eyes to ease them.
Thus they waited, the one woman in silence and in pain, and the other
two talking of this and that in the hamlet and of the man in the
farthest house and how today he was off gambling and his land lying
there waiting for him, and how this morning the man and his wife had
had a mighty quarrel for that he had taken the last bit of money in the
house, and she, poor soul, had been no match for him, and when he was
gone she had sat upon the doorstep and wailed out her woes for all to
hear, and the cousin’s wife said, “It is not as if he ever won a bit to
bring home to her either. He can only lose and lose again, and this is
what makes her so sorrowful.” And the old woman sighed and spat upon
the floor and said, “Aye, a very sorrowful thing it is when a man is
made for losing and made so he never gains, but there be some men so,
and well I know it, but not in my house, thank the gods, for my son is
very good at winning in a game.”
But before she had finished speaking the mother cried out and turned
herself away a little from the girl and she loosened her girdle and
leaned forward upon the stool. Then did the cousin’s wife run forward
and she caught nimbly in her two hands that little child for whom they
waited, and it was a son.
As for the mother, she went and laid herself upon the bed and rested
after her labor, and rest was sweet and she slept heavily and long.
While she slept the cousin’s wife washed and wrapped the child and laid
him down beside the sleeping mother and she did not wake even when his
little squeaking cry rang out. The cousin’s wife went home then to her
work once more and she bade the old woman send the boy to call her when
the mother woke.
When the lad came crying, “Did you know I have a brother now?” she came
quickly with a bowl of soup, laughing at the boy and teasing him and
saying, “I brought the boy myself and do I not know?”
But the boy stared thoughtful at this and at last he said, “Is it not
ours then to keep?” and the women laughed, but the old woman laughed
loudest of all, because she thought the boy so clever. The mother drank
the soup then gratefully, and she murmured to her cousin’s wife, “It is
your good heart, my sister.”
But the cousin’s wife said, “Do you not the same for me in my hour?”
And so the two women felt themselves the more deeply friends because of
this hour common to them both and that must come again and yet again.