But there was the man. To him there was no change in time, no hope of
any new thing day after day. Even in the coming of the children his
wife loved there was no new thing, for to him they were born the same
and one was like another and all were to be clothed and fed, and when
they were grown they must be wed in their turn and once more children
born and all was the same, each day like to another, and there was no
new thing.
In this little hamlet so had he himself been born, and except to go to
the small town which lay behind a curve of the hill upon the river’s
edge, he had never once seen anything new in any day he lived. When
he rose in the morning there was this circle of low round hills set
against this selfsame sky, and he went forth to labor until night, and
when night was come there were these hills set against this sky and he
went into the house where he had been born and he slept upon the bed
where he had slept with his own parents until it grew shameful and then
they had a pallet made for him.
Yes, and now he slept there in the bed with his own wife and children
and his old mother slept on the pallet, and it was the same bed and
the same house, and even in the house scarcely one new thing except the
few small things that had been bought at the time of his wedding, a new
teapot, the blue quilt upon the bed newly covered, new candlesticks and
a new god of paper on the wall. It was a god of wealth, and a merry old
man he was made to be, his robes all red and blue and yellow, but he
had never brought wealth to this house. No, this man looked often at
the god and cursed him in his heart because he could look so merrily
down from the earthen wall and into this poor room that was always and
ever as poor as it was.
Sometimes when the man came home from a holiday in town or when he had
gone on a rainy day to the little inn and gambled a while with the
idlers there, when he came home again to this small house, to this
woman bearing her children that he must labor to feed, it fell upon him
like a terror that so long as he lived there was naught for him but
this, to rise in the morning and go to this land of which they owned
but little and rented from a landlord who lived in pleasure in some far
city; to spend his day upon that rented land even as his father had
done before him; to come home to eat his same coarse food and never the
best the land could give, for the best must ever be sold for others to
eat; to sleep, to rise again to the same next day. Even the harvests
were not his own, for he must measure out a share to that landlord and
he must take another share and fee the townsman who was the landlord’s
agent. When he thought of this agent he could not bear it, for this
townsman was such a one as he himself would fain have been, dressed in
soft silk and his skin pale and fair and with that smooth oily look
that townsmen have who work at some small, light task and are well fed.
On such days when all these thoughts pressed on him he was very surly
and he spoke not at all to the woman except to curse her for some
slowness, and when her quick temper rose against him it was a strange
malicious pleasure to him to fall to loud quarreling with her, and it
eased him somehow, although she had often the best of him, too, because
her temper was more stout than his, except when she was angry at a
child. Even to his anger he could not cling as long as she did, but
grew weary of it and flung himself off to something else. Quickest of
all would her anger rise if he struck one of the children or shouted
at one if it cried. Then she could not bear it, and she flew against
him if it were to save a child and ever the child was right and he
was wrong, and this angered him more than anything, that she put the
children before him, or he thought she did.
Yes, on days like this he held as nothing even the good few holidays he
took, the feast days and the long idle winter days when he did nothing
but sleep, and when he could not sleep he gambled. A lucky gambler
he was, too, and he always came home with more than he took, and it
seemed an easy way to live, if he were a lone man and had but himself
to feed. He loved the chance of gambling and the excitement and the
merriment of the game and all the men crowded together to see what
lucky play he made. Truly luck was in his nimble fingers, which even
the plough and the hoe had not made stiff, for he was young yet, only
twenty and eight years of age, and he had never worked more than he
must.
But the mother never knew what was in the heart of the father of her
children. That he loved play she knew, but what matter that if he
did not lose at play? It was in truth a pride to her that when other
women complained aloud of their own men and how the scanty earnings of
the land were lost at that table in the inn, she need not complain,
and when one cried out to her, “If my poor wretch were but like that
pretty man of yours, goodwife, his fingers are faery somehow, so that
the money crawls to them of its own accord, seemingly, upon the gaming
table--a very lucky woman be you, goodwife!” she smiled complacently
and she did not often blame him for his play unless it served as excuse
for some other cause of quarrel.
And she did not blame him deeply that he could not work steadily hour
after hour in the fields as she did, though at the moment she might lay
about him sharply with her tongue. She knew that men cannot work as
women do, but have the hearts of children always in them, and she was
used now to working on in her steady way while he flung down his hoe
and laid himself upon the grass that grew on the footpath between this
field and the next and slept an hour or two. But when she said aught to
him in her scolding way, which was but the way, after all, her tongue
was used to speak, for secretly she loved him well, he would answer,
“Yes, and sleep I may for I have worked enough to feed myself.”
She might have said, “Have we not the children then and shall not each
do what he is able to make more for them?” But this she did not say
because it was true the children seemed ever hers and hers alone, since
he did nothing for them. Besides, her tongue was not so adroit as his
to find an answer.
But sometimes her wrath would come up hotly and then it would come
with more than her usual scolding speech. Once or twice in a season a
quarrel would go deep with her and give an unused bitterness to her
tongue. When the man bought some foolish trinket in the market with the
silver he had taken for the cabbage there, or when he was drunken on
a day that was not a holiday, then she would grow angry and well-nigh
she forgot she loved him in her heart. This was a deep fierce anger
too, which smouldered and broke forth so many hours after his misdeed
that the man had almost forgot what he had done, for it was his way to
forget easily anything that did not please him, and when her anger came
up in her like this she was helpless against it and it must out.
On such a day one autumn he came home with a gold ring on his finger,
or one he said was gold, and when she saw it her anger came up and she
cried in the strangest, hottest way, “You--and you will not take your
share of our common bitterness of life! No, you must needs go and spend
the scant bit we have for a silly ring to put upon your little finger!
And whoever heard of a good and honest poor man who wore a ring upon
his finger? A rich man, he may do it and nothing said, but if a poor
man does it, has it any good meaning? Gold! Whoever heard of a gold
ring bought for copper?”
At this he shouted at her, his face rebellious as a child’s, his red
lips pouting, “It is gold, I tell you! It is stolen from some rich
house, the man who sold it told me, and he showed it to me secretly
upon the street as I passed, and he had it under his coat, and let me
see it as I passed--”
But she sneered and said, “Yes, and what he saw was a silly countryman
whom he could trick! And even though it were gold, what if it be seen
upon your finger in the town some day and you be caught and thrown into
a gaol for thief and then how will we buy you out again, or even feed
you in the gaol? Give it to me and let me see if it be gold!”
But he would not give the toy to her. He shook himself sullenly as a
child does and suddenly she could not bear him. No, she flew at him and
scratched his smooth and pretty face and she beat him so heartily that
he was aghast at her and he tore the ring from his finger scornfully
but half frightened, too, and he cried, “There--take it! Very well I
know you are angry because I bought it for my own finger and not for
yours!”
At this she felt fresh anger, because when he spoke she was astonished
to know he spoke the truth, and it was secret pain to her that he never
bought any trinket to put into her ears or on her fingers as some men
do for their wives, and this she did think of when she saw the ring.
She stared at him and he said again, his voice breaking with pity for
himself and his hard life, “You ever do begrudge me the smallest good
thing for myself. No, all we have must go for those brats you breed!”
He began to weep then in good earnest and he went and flung himself
upon the bed and lay there weeping and making the most of his weeping
for her to hear, and his old mother who had heard the quarrel in
greatest fright ran to him as best she could and coaxed him lest he be
ill, and she cast hostile looks at the daughter-in-law whom commonly
she loved well enough, and the children wept when they saw their father
weep, and felt their mother hard and harsh.
But the mother was not cool yet. She picked up the ring from the dust
where he had thrown it and put it between her teeth and bit on it, lest
by any chance it might be the gold he said it was and a good bargain
they could sell again for something. It was true that sometimes stolen
things were cheaply sold, but scarcely, she thought, so cheaply as he
said this was, although he might have lied, perhaps, in fear of her.
But when she bit on it the thing would not give at all between her hard
white teeth as it must if the gold were pure, and she cried out in new
anger, “And if it were gold would it not be soft between my teeth?
It is brass and hard--” she gnawed at it a while and spat the yellow
shallow gold from out her mouth--“See, it has scarce been dipped even
in the gold!”
She could not bear it then that the man had been so childishly
deceived, and she went out from him to work upon the land, her heart
hard so that she would not see the sobbing children nor would she hear
the old mother’s quavering anxious voice that said, “When I was young
I let my man be pleased--a wife should let her man be pleased with a
little slight thing....” No, she would not hear anything to cool her
anger down.
But after she had worked a while on the land the gentle autumn wind
blew into her angry heart and cooled it without her knowing it.
Drifting leaves and brown hillsides from which the green of summer had
died away, the gray sky and the far cry of wild geese flying southward,
the quiescent land and all the quiet melancholy of the falling year
stole into her heart without her knowledge and made her kind again. And
while her hand scattered the winter wheat into the soft and well-tilled
soil, in her heart came quiet and she remembered that she loved the
man well and his laughing face came before her and stirred her and she
said to herself remorsefully, “I will make him a dainty dish for his
meal this noon. It may be I was too angry for but a little money spent,
after all.”
She was in great haste and longing to be gone then and at home to make
the dish and show him she was changed, but when she was come there he
still lay angry in the bed and he lay with his face inward and would
not say a word. When she had made the dish and had caught some shrimps
from the pond to mix into it as he liked and when she called him he
would not rise and he would not eat at all. He said very faintly as
though he were ill, “I cannot eat indeed--you have cursed the souls out
of me.”
She said no more then but set the bowl aside and went silent to her
work again, her lips pressed hard together, nor would she aid the old
mother when she besought her son to eat. But the mother could not beg
him for she remembered freshly all her anger. And as she went the dog
came up to her begging and hungry, and she went into the kitchen again
and there the dish was she had made for the man. She put out her hand
and muttered, “Well, then, I will even give it to the dog.” But she
could not do it. After all, it was food for men and not to be so wasted
and she set the dish back in the niche of the wall and found a little
stale cold rice and gave it to the dog. And she said to her heart that
she was angry still.
Yet in the night when she laid herself beside him and the children
curled against her in the darkness and she felt the man on her other
side, her anger was clean gone. Then it seemed to her this man was
but a child, too, and dependent on her as all in this house were, and
when the morning came she rose, very gentle and quiet, and after all
were fed except him, she went to him and coaxed him to rise and eat,
and when he saw her like this he rose slowly as though from a sick bed
and he ate a little of the dish she had made and then he finished it,
for it was one he loved. And while he ate the old woman watched him
lovingly, clacking as she watched, of this and that.
But he would not work that day. No, as the mother went out to the field
he sat upon a stool in the sun of the doorway and he shook his head
feebly and he said, “I feel a very weak place in me and a pain that
flutters at the mouth of my heart and I will rest myself this day.”
And the mother felt that she had been wrong to blame him so heartily
that he was like this and so she said, soothing him and sorry for her
anger, “Rest yourself, then,” and went her way.
But when she was gone the man grew restless and he was weary of his
mother’s constant chatter, for the old woman grew very merry to think
her son would be at home all day to talk to, though for the man it was
a dull thing to sit and listen to her and see the children playing.
He rose then, muttering he would be better if he had some hot tea in
him, and he went down the little street to the wayside inn his fifth
cousin kept. At the inn there were other men drinking tea, too, and
talking, and tables were set under a canopy of cloth upon the street,
where travelers might pass, and when such travelers stayed one heard
a tale or two of this strange thing and that, and even perhaps some
story-teller passed and told his tales, and indeed the inn was a merry,
noisy place.
But as he went the man met his sober cousin coming from the field for
his first morning meal, having already worked a space since dawn, and
this cousin called, “Where do you go and not at work?”
And the man answered complaining and very weak, “That woman of mine has
cursed me ill over some small thing I scarcely know, and there is no
pleasing her, and she cursed me so sore I had an illness in the night
and it frightened even her so that she bade me rest myself today and I
go to drink a little hot tea for the comfort of my belly.”
Then the cousin spat and passed on, saying nothing, for he was by
nature a man who did not speak unless he must, and kept what few
thoughts he had close in him.
* * * * *
So was the man impatient with his life and it seemed to him a thing
not to be borne forever that there was to be no new thing for him, and
only this wheel of days, year upon year, until he grew old and died.
The more hard was it to him because the few travelers who came past
the wayside inn told him of strange and wonderful things beyond the
circle of the hills and at the mouth of the river that flowed past
them. There the river met the sea, they said, and there was a vast city
full of people of many hues of skin, and money was easy come by with
very little work for it and gaming houses everywhere and pretty singing
girls in every gaming house, such girls as the men in this hamlet had
never even seen and could not hope to see their lives long. Strange
sights there were in that city, streets as smooth as threshing-floors
and carts of every sort, houses tall as mountains and shops with
windows filled with merchandise of all the world that ships brought
there from over seas. A man could spend a lifetime there looking at
those windows and he could not finish with the looking. Good food and
plenty was there, too, sea fish and sea meats, and after he had eaten
a man might enter into a great playhouse where there was every sort
of play and picture, some merry to make a man burst his belly with
laughing and some strange and fierce and some very witty and vile to
see. And strangest thing of all was this, that in the great city all
the night was light as day with a sort of lamp they had, not made with
hands nor lit with any flame, but with some pure light that was caught
from out of heaven.
Sometimes the man gamed a while with such a traveler and ever the
traveler was astonished at so skilled a gamester as he in this small
country hamlet, and would cry, “Good fellow, you play as lucky as a
city man, I swear, and you could play in any city pleasure house!”
The man smiled to hear this, then, and he said earnestly, “Do you think
I could in truth?” and he would say in his own heart with scorn and
longing, “It is true there is not one in this little dull place who
dares play with me any more, and even in the town I hold my own against
the townsmen.”
When he thought of this more than ever did he long exceedingly to
leave this life of his upon the land he hated and often he muttered to
himself as his hoe rose and fell lagging over the clods, “Here I be,
young and pretty and with my luck all in my fingers, and here I be,
stuck like a fish in a well. All I can see is this round sky over my
head and the same sky in rain or shine, and in my house the same woman
and one child after another and all alike weeping and brawling and
wanting to be fed. Why should I wear my good body to the bone to feed
them and never find any merry thing at all for me in my own life?”
And indeed, when the mother had conceived and borne this last son he
was even sullen and angered against her because she bore so easily and
so quickly after the last birth, although very well he knew this is a
thing for which a wife should be praised and not blamed, and he might
complain with justice only if she were barren, but never if she bore in
her due season every year and sons more often than not.
But in these days justice was not in him. He was but a lad still in
some ways, and younger by some two years than his wife was, as the
custom was in those parts, where it was held fitting for a man to be
younger than his wife, and his heart rose hot and high within him and
it was nothing to him that he was the father of sons, seeing that he
longed for pleasure and strange sights and any idle joy that he could
find in some city far away.
And indeed he was such a one as heaven had shaped for joy. He was well
formed and not tall, but strong and slight and full of grace, his
bones small and exquisite. He had a pretty face, too, his eyes bright
and black and full of laughter at what time he was not sullen over
something else, and when he was in good company he could always sing a
new song of some kind and he had a quick and witty tongue, and he could
say a thing seeming simple but full of wit and hidden coarseness such
as the countrymen loved. He could set a whole crowd laughing with his
songs and wit, and men and women too liked him very well. When he heard
them laugh his heart leaped with pleasure in this power he had, and
when he came home again and saw his wife’s grave face and sturdy body
it seemed to him that only she did not know him for the fine man he
truly was, for only she never praised him. It was true he made no joke
in his own house and he was seldom merry even with his own children.
He was such a one as seemed to save all his good humor and his merry,
lovable looks for strangers and for those who were not of his own house.
And the woman knew this, too, so that half it angered her and half it
was a pain when other women cried, “That man of yours, I do declare his
tongue is good as any play, and his quick merry looks--”
And she would answer quietly, “Aye, a very merry man, truly,” and would
talk then of other things to hide her pain, because she loved him
secretly. And she knew he was never merry when he was with her.
* * * * *
Now it happened that in the new summer time when the mother had borne
her fourth child, the most evil quarrel that ever was between the man
and woman came to pass. It was on a day in the sixth month of the year
and it was early summer and it was such a day in that summer as might
set any man to dreaming of new joy, and so that man had dreamed the
whole morning long. The air was so full of languor and soft warmth,
the leaves and grass so newly green, and the sky so bright and deep a
blue that scarcely could he work at all. He could not sleep, either,
for that day was too full of life for sleep, and the great heat not
yet come. Even the birds made continual songs and chirping and there
was a sweet wind, teasing and blowing now this fragrance and that down
from the hill where yellow fragrant lilies bloomed and wild wistaria
hung in pale purple wreaths. The wind blew against the sky, too, and
shifted the great billowing clouds as white as snow, and they floated
across the bright sky and set the hills and valley in such vivid light
and darkness as are seldom seen, so that now it was bright and now
shadowy, and there was no repose in the day. It was a day too merry for
work, and very disturbing to the heart of any man.
In the noontime of that bright day it happened that a pedlar of summer
stuffs came through the countryside, and he carried on his shoulder
a great heap of his stuffs, of every hue and shade, and some were
flowered, and as he went he called, “Cloth--good cloth for sale!”
When he came to this house where the man and the woman and the old
mother and the little children sat in the shade of their willow tree
and ate their noon meal he halted and cried, “Shall I stay, goodwife,
and show you my stuffs?”
But the mother called back, “We have no money to buy, unless it be a
foot of some common cheap stuff for this new son of mine. We be but
poor farmer folk and not able to buy new clothes nor much of any stuffs
except such as must be had to keep us from bareness!”
And the old woman, who must always put in her bit, cried in her little
old shrill voice, “Aye, it is true what my daughter-in-law says, and
the stuffs be very poor these days and washed to shreds in a time or
two, and I mind when I was young I wore my grandmother’s coat and it
was good till I was married and needing something new but still only
for pride’s sake, for the coat was good enough still, but here I be in
my second shroud and nearly ready for a third, the stuffs be so poor
and weak these days--”
Then the pedlar came near, scenting sale, and he was a man with very
pleasant and courteous coaxing ways such as pedlars have, and he
humored the mother and had a good kindly word for the old woman, too,
and he said to her, “Old mother, here I have a bit of cloth as good as
any the ancients had and good enough even for that new grandson you
have--goodwife, it is a bit left from a large piece that a rich lady
bought in a great village I went through today, and she bought it for
her only son. Of her I did ask the honest price seeing she cut from a
whole piece, but since there is only this bit left, I will all but give
it to you, goodwife, in honor of the fine new son you have there at
your breast.”
So saying these words smoothly and as though all in one flowing breath,
the pedlar drew from out his pack a very pretty end of cloth, and it
was as he said, flowered with great red peonies upon a grass-green
ground.
The old woman cried out with pleasure because her dim eyes could see
its hues so clear and bright, and the mother loved it when she saw it.
She looked down then at the babe upon her breast, naked except for
a bit of old rag about its belly, and it was true he was a fat and
handsome child, the prettiest of her three, and like the father, and he
would look most beautiful in that bit of flowery stuff. So it seemed
to the mother and she felt her heart grow weak in her and she said
unwillingly, “How much is that bit then? But still I cannot buy it for
we have scarcely enough to feed these children and this old soul and
pay the landlord too. We cannot buy such stuffs as rich women put upon
their only sons.”
The old woman looked very doleful at this, and the little girl had
slipped from her place and went to peer at the bright cloth, putting
her dim eyes near to see it. Only the elder lad ate on, caring nothing,
and the man sat idly, singing a little, careless of this bit of stuff
for no one but a child.
Then the pedlar dropped his voice low and coaxing and he held the
cloth near the child, but not too near either, careful lest some soil
come on it if it were not bought, and he said half whispering, “Such
cloth--such strength--such color--I have had many a piece pass through
my hands, but never such a piece as this. If I had a son of my own I
would have saved it out for him, but I have only a poor barren wife who
gives me no child at all, and why should the cloth be wasted on such as
she?”
The old woman listened to this tale and when she heard him say his wife
was barren she was vastly diverted and she cried out, “A pity, too, and
you so good a man! And why do you not take a little wife, good man,
and try again and see what you can do? I ever say a man must try three
women before he knows the fault is his--”
But the mother did not hear. She sat musing and unsure, and her heart
grew weaker still, for she looked down at her child and he was so
beautiful with this fine new stuff against his soft golden skin and his
red cheeks that she yielded and said, “What is your least price, then,
for more I cannot pay?”
Then the pedlar named a sum, and it was not too high and not as high
as she had feared, and her heart leaped secretly. But she shook her
head and looked grave and named half the sum, as the custom was in
bargaining in those parts. This was so little that the pedlar took the
cloth back quickly and put it in its place and made to go away again,
and then the mother, remembering her fair child, called out a sum a
little more, and so haggling back and forth and after many false starts
away the pedlar made, he threw down his pack again and pulled forth
the bit, agreeing at last to somewhat less than he had asked, and so
the mother rose to fetch the money from the cranny in the earthen wall
where it was kept.
Now all this time the man sat idly by, singing, and his high voice
made soft and small and stopping sometimes to sup down his hot water
that he drank always after he had eaten, and he took no part in this
bargain. But the pedlar being a very clever fellow and eager to turn
to his account every passing moment, took care to spread out seemingly
in carelessness a piece of grass cloth that he had, and it was that
cloth made of wild flax which cools the flesh upon a hot day in summer,
and in color it was like the sky, as clear, as blue. Then the pedlar
glanced secretly at the man to see if the man saw it, and he said half
laughing, “Have you bought a robe for yourself yet this summer? For
if you have not, I have it for you here, and at a price I swear is
cheaper than it can be bought in any shop in town.”
But the man shook his head and a dark look came down upon his idle,
pretty face, and he said with bitterness, “I have nothing wherewith to
buy myself anything in this house. Work I have and nothing else, and
all I gain for it is more to feed, the more I work.”
Now the pedlar had passed through many a town and countryside and it
was his trade to know men’s faces and he saw at a glance that this man
was one who loved his pleasure, and that he was like a lad held down
to life he was not ready for, and so he said in seeming kindliness and
pity, “It is true that I can see you have a very hard life and little
gain, and from your fine looks I see it is too hard a life. But if
you buy yourself a new robe you will find it like a very potent new
medicine to put pleasure in your heart. There is nothing like a new
summer robe to put joy in a man, and with that ring upon your finger
shined and cleaned and your hair smoothed with a bit of oil and this
new robe upon you, I swear I could not see a prettier man even in a
town.”
Now the man heard this and it pleased him and he laughed aloud half
sheepishly, and then he remembered himself and said, “And why should
I not for once have a new robe for myself? There is nothing ahead but
one after another of these young ones, and am I forever to wear my
old rags?” And he stooped swiftly and fingered the good stuff in his
fingers and while he looked at it the old mother was excited by the
thought and she cried, “It is a very fair piece, my son, and if you
must have a robe then this is as pretty a blue robe as ever I did see,
and I remember once your father had such a robe--was it when we were
wed? But no, I was wed in winter, yes, in winter, for I sneezed so at
the wedding and the men laughed to see a bride sneezing so--”
But the man asked suddenly and roughly, “How much will it be for a
robe?”
Now when the pedlar said the price, at that moment the mother came
forth with the money in her hand counted and exact to the last penny
and she cried out alarmed, “We can spend no more!”
At that cry of hers some desire hardened in the man and he said
wilfully, “But I will have myself a robe cut from this piece and I like
it very well so that I will have it for the once! There are those three
silver pieces I know we have.”
Now those three coins were of good value and coins the mother had
brought with her when she came to be wed, and her own mother had handed
them to her for her own when she left her home. They were her precious
possession and she had never found the hour when she could spend them.
Even when she had bought the coffin for the old mother when they
thought her dying, she had pinched and borrowed and would not spend her
own, and often the thought of those three silver pieces was in her mind
for safe riches, and they were there if ever times grew too hard, some
war or hardship that might come at any hour and lose them the fruits of
their land. With those three coins in the wall she knew they could not
starve for a while. So now she cried, “That silver we cannot spend!”
But the man leaped up as swift as a swallow and darted past her in
a fury and he went to that cranny and searched in it and seized the
silver. Yet the woman was after him, too, and she caught him and held
him and hung to him as he ran. But she was not quick enough and never
quick enough for his litheness. He threw her aside so that she fell
upon the earthen floor, and the child still in her arms, and he ran out
shouting as he ran, “Cut me off twelve feet of it and the foot and more
to spare that is the custom!”
This the pedlar made haste to do, and he took the silver coins quickly,
although indeed they were somewhat less than he had asked, but he was
anxious to be away and yet have his stuff sold, too. When the mother
came out at last the pedlar was gone and the man stood in the green
shade of the tree, the blue stuff bright and new in his two hands, and
her silver gone. The old woman sat afraid and when she saw the mother
come she began in haste to speak of this or that in a loud creaky
voice, “A very pretty blue, my son, and not dear, and a long summer
since you had a grass cloth--”
But the man looked blackly at the woman, his face dark and red, and he
roared at her, still bold with his anger, “Will you make it, then, or
shall I take it to some woman and pay her to make it and tell her my
wife will not?”
But the mother said nothing. She sat down again upon her little stool
and she sat silent at first, pale and shaken with her fall, and the
child she held still screamed in fright. But she paid no heed to him.
She set him on the ground to scream, and twisted up afresh the knot of
her loosened hair. She panted for a while and swallowed once or twice
and at last she said, not looking at the man, “Give it to me then. I
will make it.”
She was ashamed to have another do it and know the quarrel more than
they did now, watching from their doors when they heard the angry cries.
But from that day on the woman harbored this hour against the man. Even
while she cut the cloth and shaped it, and she did it well and the best
she knew to do, for it was good stuff and worth good care, still she
took no pleasure in the work and while she made the robe she stayed
hard and silent with the man, and she said no small and easy thing
about the day or what had happened in the street or any little thing
such as contented women say about a house. And because she was hard
with him in these small ways the man was sullen and he did not sing
and as soon as he had eaten he went away to the wayside inn and he sat
there among the men and drank his tea and gambled far into the night,
so that he must needs sleep late the next day. When he did so in usual
times she would scold him and keep him miserable until he gave over
for peace’s sake, but now she let him sleep and she went alone to the
fields, hard and silent against him whatever he might do, though her
heart was dreary, too, while she kept it hard.
Even when the robe was done at last, and she was long in making it
because there was the rice to be set and planted, even when it was
done she said nothing of how it looked upon him. She gave it to him
and he put it on and he shined his ring with bits of broken stone and
he smoothed his hair with oil he poured from the kitchen bottle and he
went swaggering down the street.
Yet even when this one and that cried out to him how fine he was and
how fine his robe, he took no full sweet pleasure in himself as he
might have done. She had said no word to him. No, when he had lingered
at the door an instant she went on with her task, bending to the
short-handled broom and sweeping about the house and never looking up
to ask if the robe fitted him or if his body was suited to its shape,
as she was wont to do if she had made him even so much as a pair of new
shoes. At last he had even said, half shy, “It seems to me you have
sewed this robe better than any robe I ever had, and it fits me as a
townsman’s does.”
But still she would not look up. She set the broom in its corner and
went and fetched a roll of cotton wool and set herself to spinning it
to thread, since she had used her store in the making of the blue robe.
At last she answered bitterly, “At the cost it was to me it should
look like an emperor’s robe.”
But she would not look at him, no, not even when he flung himself down
the street. She would not even look at him secretly when his back was
turned because she was so bitter against him, although her heart knew
the blue robe suited him well.
V
Through that day long the mother watched for the man to come home. It
was a day when the fields could be left to their own growing, for the
rice was planted in its pools, and in the shallow water and in the warm
sunlight the green young plants waved their newly forming heads in the
slight winds. There was no need to go out to the land that day.
So the mother sat under the willow tree spinning and the old woman
came to sit beside her, glad of one to listen to what she said, and
while she talked she unfastened her coat and stretched her thin old
withered arms in the hot sun and felt the good heat in her bones, and
the children ran naked in the sunshine too. But the mother sat silently
on, twisting the spindle with a sure movement between her thumb and the
finger she wet on her tongue, and the thread came out close spun and
white, and when she had made a length of it she wound it about a bit of
bamboo polished smooth to make a spool. She spun as she did all things,
firmly and well, and the thread was strong and hard.
Slowly the sun climbed to noon and she put her spinning down and rose.
“He will be coming home soon and hungry for all his blue robe,” she
said dryly, and the old woman answered, cackling with her ready, feeble
laughter, “Oh, aye, what is on a man’s belly is not the same as what is
in it--”
The mother went then and dipped rice with a gourd from the basket where
they kept it stored, and she leveled the gourd with her other hand so
not a grain was spilled, and she poured the rice into a basket made
of finely split bamboo and went along the path to the pond’s edge,
and as she went she looked down the street. But she saw no glimpse of
new blue. She stepped carefully down the bank and began to wash the
rice, dipping the basket into the water and scrubbing the grain with
her brown strong hands, dipping it again and again until the rice
shone clean and white as wet pearls. On her way back she stooped to
pull a head of cabbage where it grew, and threw a handful of grass to
the water buffalo tethered under a tree, and so she came again to the
house. Now the elder boy came home from the street leading his sister
by the hand, and the mother asked him quietly, “Saw you your father on
the street or in the inn or at anyone’s door?”
“He sat a while at the inn drinking tea this morning,” the boy replied,
wondering. “And I saw his robe, new and blue, and it was pretty and our
cousin when he knew how much it cost said it had cost my father very
dear.”
“Aye, it cost him dear, I swear!” said the mother, suddenly, her voice
hard.
And the girl piped up, echoing her brother, “Yes, his robe was
blue--even I could see that it was blue.”
But the mother said no more. The babe began to weep where he lay
sleeping in a winnowing basket and she went and picked him up and
opened her coat and held him to her breast, and she suckled him as she
went to cook the meal. But first she called to the old woman, “Turn
yourself where you sit, old mother, and watch and tell me if you see
the new blue of his robe, and I will put the meal on the table.”
“I will, then, daughter,” called the old dame cheerfully.
Yet when the rice was cooked and flaked, white and dry as the man loved
it, still he did not come. When the cabbage was tender and the woman
had even made a bit of sweet and sour sauce to pour upon its heart, as
he loved it, he did not come.
They waited a while and the old woman grew hungry and faint with the
smell of the food in her nostrils and she cried out, in a sudden small
anger, being so hungry, “Wait no more for that son of mine! The water
is leaking out of my mouth and my belly is as empty as a drum and still
he is not here!”
So the mother gave the old woman her bowl then and she fed the children
too and even let them eat of the cabbage, only she saved the heart of
it for him. She ate also after this, but sparingly for she seemed less
zestful in her hunger today, somehow, so there was still much rice left
and a good bowlful of the cabbage and this she put carefully away where
the wind would catch it and keep it fresh. It would be as good at night
as it was now if she heated it again. Then she gave suck to the babe,
and he drank his fill and slept, a round, fat, sturdy child, sleeping
in the strong sun and brown and red with its heat, and the two children
stretched in the shade of the willow tree and slept and the old woman
nodded on her bench, and over the whole small hamlet the peace of sleep
and the silence of the heat of noonday fell, so that even the beasts
stood with drooping, drowsy heads.
Only the mother did not sleep. She took up her spindle and she sat
herself in the shade of the willow tree that cast its shadow on the
western part of the threshing-floor and she twisted the thread and
wound it. But after a while she could not work. Through the morning she
had worked steadily and smoothly, twisting and turning and spinning,
but now she could not be still. It was as though some strange anxiety
gathered like a power in her body. She had never known the man not to
come home for his food. She murmured to herself, “It must be he has
gone into the town to game or for something or other.”
This she had not thought of, but the more she thought upon it the
more it seemed true that so he had done. And after a while her
cousin-neighbor came out to go to his fields and after a while his
wife awoke from where she had sat sleeping by a tree, and she called,
“Has your man gone for the day somewhere?”
The mother answered easily, “Aye, he has gone to the town on some
business of his own,” and the cousin searching slowly among his hoes
and spades for what he wanted called in his thin voice, “Aye, I saw him
gay in his new blue robe and set for town!”
“Aye,” said the woman.
Now her heart eased itself somewhat, and she fell to spinning again
with more zeal, since the cousin had seen him set for town. He had gone
for a day’s pleasure, doubtless, flinging himself off for the day to
revenge himself on her. It was what he would do with his new gown and
that brass ring of his scrubbed bright and clean and his hair covered
with oil. She nursed her anger somewhat at the thought. But her anger
was dead, and she could not make it live again, because it was mingled
with some strange anxiety still, for all the cousin’s words.
The afternoon wore on long and hot. The old woman woke and cried that
her mouth was dry as bark and the mother rose and fetched her tea to
drink, and the children woke and rolled in the dust a while and rose at
last to play, and the babe woke and lay merry in his basket, happy with
his sleep.
Still the mother could not rest. If she could have slept she would
have, and on any common day she could have dropped easily into sleep
even as she worked, since she was so sound and robust that sleep came
on her deep and sweet and without her seeking it. But there was some
gnawing in her heart today that held her wide awake and as though she
listened for some sound that must come.
She rose at last impatient with her waiting and weary of the empty
street that was empty for her so long as she did not see the one she
sought, and she took up the babe and set him on her thigh and she took
her hoe and went to the field, and she called to the old woman, “I go
to weed the corn on the south hillside.” And as she went she thought to
herself that it would be easier if she were not at the house, and the
hours would pass more quickly if she pushed her body to some hard labor.
So through the afternoon she worked in the corn field, her face
shielded from the sun’s heat with a blue cotton kerchief, and up and
down she moved her hoe unceasingly among the green young corn. It was
but a small, ragged field, for all of their land which could bear it
they put into rice, terracing even the hillsides as high as water could
be forced, because rice is a more dainty food than corn and sells for
higher price.
The sun poured down upon the shadeless hill and beat upon her and
soon her coat was wet and dark with her sweat. But she would not rest
at all except sometimes to suckle the babe when he cried, and then
she sat flat on the earth and suckled him and wiped her hot face and
stared across the brilliant summer land, seeing nothing. When he was
satisfied she put him down again to work once more and she worked until
her body ached and her mind was numb and she thought of nothing now
except of those weeds falling under the point of her hoe and withering
in the dry hot sunshine. At last the sun rested on the edge of the land
and the valley fell into sudden shadow. Then she straightened herself
and wiped her wet face with her coat and she muttered aloud, “Surely he
will be home waiting--I must go to make his food.” And picking up the
child from the bed of soft earth where she had laid him she went home.
But he was not there. When she turned the corner of the house he was
not there. The old woman was peering anxiously toward the field, and
the two children sat upon the doorstep waiting and weary and they cried
out when they saw her and she said bewildered, “Your father--is he not
come yet?”
“He has not come and we are hungry,” cried the boy, and the girl
echoed in her broken, childish way, “Not come, and we are hungry!”
and sat with her eyes fast shut against the piercing last golden rays
of the sun. And the old mother rose and hobbled to the edge of the
threshing-floor and called out shrilly to the cousin coming home, “Saw
you my son anywhere?”
But the mother cried out in sudden impatience, “Let be, old mother! Do
not tell all he is not come!”
“Well, but he does not,” said the old woman, peering, troubled.
But the mother said no more. She fetched cold rice for the children and
heated a little water and poured it over the rice for the old woman
and found a morsel of some old food for the dog, and while they ate
she went down the street, the babe upon her arm, to the wayside inn.
There were but few guests there now, and only a scattered one or two on
his way home to some near village, for it was the hour when men are in
their homes and the day’s work done. If he were there, she thought, he
would be sitting at a table nearest the street where he could hear and
see whatever passed, or at a table with a guest, for he would not be
alone if he could help it, or if there was a game going on, he would be
in the middle of it. But although she stared as she came there was no
glint of a new blue robe and no clatter of gambling upon a table. She
went and looked within the door then, but he was not there. Only the
innkeeper stood resting himself after the evening meal and he leaned
against the wall by his stove, his face black with the smoke and grease
of many days, for in such a blackish trade as his it seemed to him but
little use to wash himself, seeing he was black again so soon.
“Have you seen the father of my children?” the mother called.
But the innkeeper picked at his teeth with his black fingernail and
sucked and called back idly, “He sat here a while in that new blue
robe of his this morning and then he went townward for the day.” And
smelling some new gossip he cried afresh, “What--has aught happened,
goodwife?”
“Nothing--nothing--” replied the mother in haste. “He had business in
the town and it kept him late, I dare swear, and it may be he will
spend the night somewhere and come home tomorrow.”
“And what business?” asked the innkeeper suddenly curious.
“How can I know, being but a woman?” she answered and turned away.
But on the way home while her lips called answer back to those who
called to her as she passed, she thought of something. When she reached
the house she went in and went to that cranny and felt in it. It was
empty. Well she knew there had been a precious small store of copper
coins there, and a small silver bit, too, because he had sold the rice
straw for a good price a day or two ago, being clever at such things,
and he brought a good part of the money back. She had taken it from him
and counted it and put it into the cranny and there it should be. But
it was not there.
Then she knew indeed that he was gone. It came over her in a daze that
he was truly gone. She sat down suddenly there in the earthen house
upon the earthen floor and holding the babe in her arms she rocked
herself back and forth slowly and in silence. Well, he was gone! Here
was she with the three children and the old woman, and he gone!
The babe began to fret suddenly and without knowing what she did she
opened her bosom to him. The two children came in, the girl whimpering
and rubbing her eyes, and the old woman came in leaning on her staff
and saying over and over, “I do wonder where is my son. Daughter, did
my son say where he was? A very strange thing where my son is gone--”
Then the mother rose and said, “He will be back tomorrow, doubtless,
old mother. Lie you down now and sleep. He will be back tomorrow.”
The old mother listened and echoed, comforted, “Oh, aye, back tomorrow
doubtless,” and went to her pallet, feeling through the dim room.
Then the mother led the two children into the dooryard and washed them
as her wont was on a summer’s night before they slept, and she poured a
gourdful of water over each of them, rubbing their smooth brown flesh
clean with her palm as she poured. But she did not hear what they
said, nor did she heed the girl’s moaning of her eyes. Only when they
went to the bed and the boy cried, astonished that his father was not
come, “And where does my father sleep, then?”--only then did the mother
answer out of her daze, “Doubtless in the town, for he will come home
tomorrow or in a day or so,” and she added in sudden anger, “Doubtless
when that bit of money is gone he will be home again,” and she added
again and most bitterly, “And that new blue robe will be filthy and
ready for me to wash already, doubtless!”
And she was somehow glad she could be angry at him, and she held her
anger, clinging to it, because it made him seem more near, and she
clung to it while she led in the beast and barred the door against the
night and she muttered, “I dare swear I shall be just asleep when he
comes pounding at the door, even tonight!”
But in the dark night, in the still, hot night, in the silence of the
closed room, her anger went out of her and she was afraid. If he did
not come back what would she do, a lone woman and young?... The bed
was enormous, empty. She need take no care tonight, she might spread
her arms and legs out as she would. He was gone. Suddenly there fell
upon her the hottest longing for that man of hers. These six years
she had lain against him. Angry she might be with him in the day, but
at night she was near to him again and she forgot his idle ways and
his childishness. She remembered now how good and fair he was to look
upon, not coarse in the mouth and foul of breath as most men are, but a
very fair young man to see, and his teeth as white as rice. So she lay
longing for him, and all her anger was gone out of her and only longing
left.
When the morning came she rose weary with her sleeplessness, and again
she could be hard. When she rose and he did not come and she had turned
the beasts out and fed the children and the old woman, she hardened
herself and over and over she muttered half aloud, “He will come when
his money is gone--very well I know he will come then!”
When the boy stared at the emptiness of the bed and when he asked
astonished, “Where is my father still?” she replied sharply and in a
sudden loud voice, “I say he is away a day or two, and if any asks you
on the street you are to say he is away a day or so.”
Nevertheless on that day when the children were off to play here and
there she did not go to the fields. No, she set her stool so that
she could see through the short single street of the hamlet if any
came that way, and while she made answer somehow to the old mother’s
prattling she thought to herself that the blue robe was so clear a blue
she could see it a long way off and she set herself to spinning, and
with every twist she gave to the spindle she looked secretly down the
road. And she counted over in her mind the money he had taken and how
many days it might last, and it seemed to her it could not last more
than six or seven days, except he had those nimble lucky fingers of his
to game with and so he might make more and stay a little longer, too,
before he must come back. Times there were as the morning wore on when
she thought she could not bear the old mother’s prattling voice any
more, but she bore it still for the hope of seeing the man come home
perhaps.
When the children wandered home at noon hungry and the boy spied the
cabbage bowl set aside for his father and asked for some, she would
not let him have it. She cuffed him soundly when he asked again and she
answered loudly, “No, it is for your father. If he comes home tonight
he will be hungry and want it all for himself.”
The long still summer’s afternoon wore on, and he did not come, and the
sun set in its old way, heavy and full of golden light, and the valley
was filled with the light for a little while, and the night came and it
was deep and dark and now she refused no more. She set the bowl before
the children and she said, “Eat what you will, for it will spoil if it
is left until another day, and who knows--” and she dipped up some of
the sweet and sour sauce and gave it to the old woman saying, “Eat it,
and I will make fresh if he comes tomorrow.”
“Will he come tomorrow then?” the old woman asked, and the mother
answered sombrely, “Aye, tomorrow perhaps.”
That night she laid herself down most sorrowful and afraid upon her bed
and this night she said openly to her own heart that none knew if he
would ever come back again.
* * * * *
Nevertheless, there was the hope of the seven days when his money might
be gone. One by one the seven days came, and in each one it seemed to
her in the midst of her waiting as though the day was come for his
return. She had never been a woman to gad about the little hamlet or
chatter overmuch with the other women there. But now one after another
of these twenty or so came by to see and ask, and they asked where her
man was, and they cried, “We are all one house in this hamlet and all
somehow related to him and kin,” and at last in her pride the mother
made a tale of her own and she answered boldly, from a sudden thought
in her head, “He has a friend in a far city, and the friend said there
was a place there he could work and the wage is good so that we need
not wear ourselves upon the land. If the work is not suited to him he
will come home soon, but if it be such work as he thinks fit to him, he
will not come home until his master gives him holiday.”
This she said as calmly as she ever spoke a truth, and the old woman
was astounded and she cried, “And why did you not tell me so good a
lucky thing, seeing I am his mother?”
And the mother made a further tale and she answered, “He told me not
to speak, old mother, because he said your tongue was as loose in your
mouth as any pebble and all the street would know more than he did, and
if he did not like it he would not have them know it.”
“Did he so, then!” cackled the old mother, leaning forward on her staff
to peer at her daughter’s face, her old empty jaws hanging, and she
said half hurt, “It is true I ever was a good talker, daughter, but not
so loose as any pebble!”
Again and again the mother told the tale and once told she added to it
now and then to make it seem more perfect in its truth.
Now there was one woman who came often past her house, a widow woman
who lived in an elder brother’s house, and she had not overmuch to do,
being widowed and childless, and she sat all day making little silken
flowers upon a shoe she made for herself, and she could ponder long on
any little curious thing she heard. So she pondered on this strange
thing of a man gone, and one day she thought of something and she ran
down the street as fast as she could on her little feet and she cried
shrewdly to the mother, “But there has no letter come a long time to
this hamlet and I have not heard of any letter coming to that man of
yours!”
She went secretly to the only man who knew how to read in the hamlet,
and he wrote such few letters as any needed to have written and read
such as came for any, and so added a little to his livelihood. This man
the widow asked secretly, “Did any letter come for Li The First, who
was son to Li The Third in the last generation?”
And when the man said no, the gossip cried out, “But there was a
letter, or so his wife says, and but a few days ago.”
Then the man grew jealous lest they had taken the letter to some other
village writer and he denied again and again, and he said, “Very well I
know there was no letter, nor any answering letter, nor has anyone come
to me to read or write or to buy a stamp to put on any letter and I am
the only one who has such stamps. And there has not come so much as a
letter carrier this way for twenty days or more.”
Then the widow smelled some strange thing and she told everywhere,
whispering that the wife of Li The First lied and there had been no
letter and doubtless the husband had run away and left his wife. Had
there not been a great quarrel over the new robe, so that the whole
hamlet heard them cursing each other, and the man had pushed her down
and struck her even? Or so the children said.
But when the talk leaked through to the mother she answered stoutly
that what she said was true and that she had made the new blue robe on
purpose for the man to go to the far town, and that the quarrel was for
another thing. As for the letter, there was no letter but the news had
come by word of mouth from a traveling pedlar who had come in from the
coast.
Thus did the mother lie steadfastly and well, and the old woman
believed the tale heartily and cried out often of her son and how rich
he would be, and the mother kept her face calm and smooth and she did
not weep as women do when their men run away and shame them. At last
the tale seemed true to all, and even the gossip was silenced somewhat
and could only mutter darkly over her silken flowers, “We will see--as
time comes, we will see if there is money sent or any letter written,
or if he comes home ever and again.”
So the little stir in the hamlet died down and the minds of people
turned to other things and they forgot the mother and her tale.
* * * * *
Then did the mother set herself steadfastly to her life. The seven days
were long past and the man did not come and the rice ripened through
the days and hung heavy and yellow and ready for the harvest and he
did not come. The woman reaped it alone then except for two days when
the cousin came and helped her when his own rice was cut and bound in
sheaves. She was glad of his help and yet she feared him too, for he
was a man of few words, honest and few, and his questions were simple
and hard not to answer truthfully. But he worked silently and asked
her nothing and he said nothing except the few necessary words he must
until he went away, and then he said, “If he is not come when the time
is here to divide the grain with the landlord, I will help you then,
for the new agent is a wily, clever man, and of a sort ill for a woman
to do with alone.”
She thanked him quietly, glad of his help, for she knew the agent but
a little, since he was new in the last years to those parts, and a
townsman who had a false heartiness in all he did and said.
So day had passed into month, and day after day the woman had risen
before the dawn and she left the children and the old woman sleeping,
and she set their food ready for them to eat when they woke, and taking
the babe with her in one arm and in her other hand the short curved
sickle she must use in reaping she set out to the fields. The babe was
large now and he could sit alone and she set him down upon the earth
and let him play as he would, and he filled his hands with earth and
put it to his mouth and ate of it and spat it out hating it and yet he
forgot and ate of it again until he was covered with the muddy spew.
But whatever he did the mother could not heed him. She must work for
two and work she did, and if the child cried he must cry until she was
weary and could sit down to rest and then she could put her breast to
his earthy mouth and let him drink and she was too weary to care for
the stains he left upon her.
Handful by handful she reaped the stiff yellow grain, bending to every
handful, and she heaped it into sheaves. When gleaners came to her
field to glean what she might drop, as beggars and gleaners do at
harvest time, she turned on them, her face dark with sweat and earth,
and drawn with the bitterness of labor, and she screamed curses at
them, and she cried, “Will you glean from a lone woman who has no
man to help her? I am poorer than you, you beggars, and you cursed
thieves!” And she cursed them so heartily and she so cursed the mothers
that bore them and the sons they had themselves that at last they let
her fields be, because they were afraid of such powerful cursing.
Then sheaf by sheaf she carried the rice to the threshing-floor and
there she threshed it, yoking the buffalo to the rude stone roller they
had, and she drove the beast all through the hot still days of autumn,
and she drove herself, too. When the grain was threshed, she gathered
the empty straw and heaped it and tossed the grain up and winnowed it
in the winds that came sometimes.
Now she pressed the boy into labor too and if he lagged or longed to
play she cuffed him out of her sheer weariness and the despair of her
driven body. But she could not make the ricks. She could not heap the
sheaves into the ricks, for this the man had always done, since it was
a labor he hated less than some, and he did it always neatly and well
and plastered the tops smooth with mud. So she asked the cousin to
teach her this one year and she could do it thenceforth with the boy if
the man stayed longer than a year, and the cousin came and showed her
how and she bent her body to the task and stretched and threw the grass
to him as he sat on top of the rick and spread it, and so the rice was
harvested.
She was bone-thin now with her labor and with being too often weary,
and every ounce of flesh was gone from her, and her skin was burnt a
dark brown except the red of cheeks and lips. Only the milk stayed in
her breasts rich and full. Some women there are whose food goes all to
their own fat and none to child or food for child, but this woman was
made for children, and her motherhood would rob her own body ruthlessly
if there was any need for child.
Then came the day set for measuring out the landlord’s share of all
the harvest. Now this landlord of the hamlet and the fields about it
never came himself to fetch his share. He lived an idle rich man in
some far city or other, since the land was his from his fathers, and he
sent in his place his agent, and this year it was a new agent, for his
old agent had left him the last year, being rich enough after twenty
years to cease his labors. This new agent came now and he came to every
farmer in that hamlet, and the mother waited at her own door, the grain
heaped on the threshing-floor and waiting, and the agent came.
He was a townsman, head to foot, a tall, smooth man, his gown gray silk
and leathern shoes on his feet, and he had a large smooth hand he put
often to his shaven lip, and when he moved a scent of some sort came
from him. The mother hung back when he came and when he called, “Where
is the farmer?” the woman waited and let the old mother pipe forth, “My
son he works in the city now, and there be only we upon the land.”
And the woman sent the lad for the cousin and she waited silently,
coming forward to hand the man his tea but saying nothing but common
greeting, yet feeling his eyes somehow hot upon her bare feet and on
her face. And she stood by while the cousin measured off the grain
for her, and measured the share the agent took for his own, and the
woman was glad she needed to say nothing nor even come near to see
the weight, so honest was her cousin. But she saw the grain divided
and hard it was too, as it was hard for every farmer, to give to this
smooth townsman his own share in what they had labored on. But they
gave grimly, and so did she, knowing that if they did not they would
suffer, and besides the landlord’s share they gave the agent a fat fowl
or two or a measure of rice or some eggs or even silver for his private
fee.
More than this, when all the grain was measured out the village must
set a feast before the agent and every house must give a dish. Even in
this lonely year the mother caught a fowl and killed it and cooked it
for the feast, steaming it gently and long until it was done and while
the shape was whole and the skin unbroken, yet was the flesh so tender
that when the first chopsticks touched it it would fall apart. The
savor of that fowl and its smell when it had cooked so many hours were
more than the children could endure and they hung about the kitchen and
the boy cried, “I wish it were for us--I wish we ever could eat a fowl
ourselves!”
But the mother was bitter with her weariness and she answered, “Who can
eat such meat except a rich man?”
Nevertheless when the feast was over she went to the littered table
where the men had sat and she picked up a bone left from her fowl and
a little skin was hanging to it and a shred of meat and she took it and
gave it to the lad to suck and she said, “Hasten and grow big, my son,
and you can eat at table with them too.”
Then the boy asked innocently, “Do you think my father will let me?”
The mother answered bitterly, “If he is not here you shall eat in his
place, that I swear.”
* * * * *
Thus the year wore on to late autumn. Almost the children had forgotten
that there had ever been another in the bed except themselves and
their mother, and even the old woman seldom thought to ask of her son,
because the chill winds set her old bones aching, and she had enough
to do to search for this warm spot and that out of wind and in the
sun, and she complained incessantly because the winds shifted so, and
because every year the sun seemed cooler than the year before.
The boy worked daily now in small ways and took it as his duty. Every
day when there was no other task he led the buffalo to the hill lands
and let it feed on the short grass, lying upon its back the whole day
through, or coming down to leap upon some grave and sit there catching
crickets in the grass and weaving little cages for them out of stems of
grass. When he came home at night he hung the cages by the door, and
the crickets chirped and the sound pleased the babe and his sister.
But soon the wild grass on the hills browned with coming winter and
the summer flowers among the grass bore seed and the byways were gay
with purple asters and with small yellow wild chrysanthemums, which are
the flowers of autumn, and it was time to cut the grass for winter’s
fuel. Then the boy went with his mother and all day she cut the dried
grass with her short-handled sickle and the boy twisted rope of grass
and bound what she cut into sheaves. Everywhere over all the mountain
sides there were spots of blue and these were people like themselves
cutting and binding the brown grass into sheaves. In the evening when
the sun set and the night air came down chill from the hill tops the
people all went winding homeward through the narrow hilly paths, each
loaded with two great sheaves upon a pole across the shoulder, and so
did the mother also, and the boy with two little sheaves.
When they came home the first thing the mother did was to seize the
babe and ease her breasts of their load of milk and the child drank
hungrily, having had but rice gruel in the day. The old woman these
cold early nights crept into bed to warm herself as soon as the sun was
set and the little girl came feeling her way out into the last light of
day, wincing a little even in that pale light, and she sat smiling on
the threshold, rejoicing in her brother’s coming, for she missed him
now he had to work.
So did the autumn pass, and here was the ground to be ploughed for
wheat and the wheat sown and the mother taught the lad how to scatter
it so that a passing wind would help him and how to watch the wind,
too, and not let the grain fall too thickly here and too scanty there.
Then the winter came when the wheat was sprouted but a little, and the
fields shrank and hardened in the oncoming cold. Now the mother drew
the winter garments out from under her bed where she kept them and she
sunned them and made them ready to wear. But the rough work of the
summer and the autumn had so torn her hands that even the coarse cotton
cloth caught at the cracks upon them and her fingers were stiff and
hard, although shapely still in the bone.
Yet she worked on, sitting now in the doorway to be in the southern
sun and out of the sharp wind and first she tended to the old woman’s
garments, since she felt the chill so much. And she bade the old woman
stay in bed a day or two and take off the red shroud she wore, and
in between the stuff and its lining she put back the cotton wadding
she had taken out when summer came, and the old woman lay snug and
chattered happily and cried, “Shall I outlast this shroud, do you
think, daughter-in-law? In summer time I feel I shall, but when the
winter comes I am not sure, because my food does not heat me as once it
did.”
And the mother answered absently, “Oh, you will last, I dare swear, old
mother, and I never saw such an old crone for lasting on when others
have gone the common way.”
Then the old woman cackled full of pleasure and she cackled, laughing
and coughing, “Aye, a very lasting sort I be, I know!” and lay content
and waited for her shroud to be made warm for her again.
And the mother mended the children’s clothing, but the girl’s garments
she must give to the babe, and the boy’s to the girl, so had they all
three grown in the year. Then came the question of what the lad would
wear to keep him warm. There was the man’s padded coat and there the
trousers that he had worn those three winters gone and he had torn them
and she had mended them at wrist and neck, and in the front was a long
tear where the buffalo’s horn had caught one day when he was angry at
the beast and had jerked the rope passed through its nostrils, so that
it tossed its head in agony.
But she could not bear to cut them small to the lad’s shape. She turned
the garments over pondering and aching and at last she muttered, “What
if he should come--I will not do it yet.”
But there the boy was not clad for winter and he waited shivering in
the chill of morning and evening, and at last she set her lips and
made the garments small for him and she comforted herself and said in
her heart, “If he comes we can sell some of the rice and buy new ones.
If he should come at the new year he will take pleasure in the new
garments.”
So the winter wore on and it seemed to the woman that the man must
surely come at the new year, a time when all men go to their homes if
they still live and are not beggars. So when any asked her she began to
say, “He will come home for the new year festival,” and the old mother
said a score of times a day, “When my son comes at new year....” and
the children hoped too for the day. Now and again the gossip would
smile and say in her malice, and she was making herself a fine new pair
of shoes against the day of festival, “It is strange no letter comes
from that man of yours, and I know none comes, for the letter writer
tells me so.”
Then the mother would answer with outward calm, “But I have heard
several times by mouth of one who passed, and my man and I have never
held with much writing and the good money that must go out for it, and
no knowing, either, what hired writers forget to say and it is all
written and it is public for the whole street to know when once it does
come to me. I am glad he sends no letters.”
So did she silence the gossip, and so much she said he would come at
the new year that truly it seemed to her he would. The time drew near
and everyone in the hamlet was busy for the feast, and she must needs
be busy, too, not only for the children, to make them new shoes and
wash their garments clean and make a new cap for the babe, but she
must be busy for the man, also. She filled two great baskets with the
rice, all she dared to spare, and carried them to the town, and sold
them at but a little less in price than the man did, and this was well
enough, seeing she was a woman bargaining alone with men. With the
money she bought two red candles and incense to burn before the god and
red letters of luck to paste upon the tools and on the plough and farm
things that she used, and she bought a little lard and sugar to make
sweet cakes for the day. Then with what was left she went into a cloth
shop and bought twenty feet or so of good blue cotton cloth and to
another shop and bought five pounds of carded cotton wool for padding.
Yes, she was so sure by now he would come that she even set her
scissors in that cloth and she cut it slowly and with pains and care
and she made a coat and trousers of the good stuff and padded them
evenly and quilted them, and so she finished the garments to the last
button she made of bits of cloth twisted hard and sewed fast. Then she
put the garments away against his coming, and to all of them it seemed
the garments brought the man more nearly home again.
* * * * *
But the day dawned and he did not come. No, all day long they sat in
their clean clothes, the children clean and frightened lest they soil
themselves, and the old woman careful not to spill her food upon her
lap, and the mother made herself to smile steadfastly all through the
day, and she told them all, “It is still day yet, and he may yet come
in the day.” There came those to the door who had been good fellows
with her man and they came to wish him well if he were come, and she
pressed tea on them and the little cakes and when they asked she said,
“Truly he may come today, but it may be his master cannot spare him
days enough to come so far, and I hear his master loves him well and
leans on him.”
And when the next day the women came she said this also and she smiled
and seemed at ease and said, “Since he is not come, there will come
word soon, I swear, and tell me why,” and then she spoke of other
things.
So the days passed and she talked easily and the children and the old
woman believed what she said, trusting her in everything.
But in the nights, in the dark nights, she wept silently and most
bitterly. Partly she wept because he was gone, but sometimes she wept,
too, because she was so put to shame, and sometimes she wept because
she was a lone woman and life seemed too hard for her with these four
leaning on her.
One day when she sat thinking of her weeping it came to her that at
least she could spare herself the shame. Yes, when she thought of the
money she had spent for his new garments and he did not come, and of
the cakes she had made and of the incense burned to pray for him, and
he did not come, and when she thought of the gossip’s sly looks and
all her whispered hints and the wondering doubtful looks of even her
good cousin, when time passed and still the man did not come, then it
seemed to her she must spare herself the shame.
And she wiped her tears away and plotted and she thought of this to do.
She carried all the rice she could spare into the city and the straw
she had to spare and she sold it. When she had the silver in her hand
she asked for a paper bit that is as good as silver, and with it she
went to a letter writer, a strange man in that town she did not know,
and he sat in his little booth beside the Confucian temple. She sat
down on the little bench near by, and she said, “I have a letter to
write for a brother who is working and is not free to go home, and so
say what I tell you. He is ill upon his bed, and I write for him.”
Then the old man took out his spectacles and stopped staring at the
passersby, and he took a sheet of new paper and he wet his brush upon
the block of ink and looked at her and said, “Say on, then, but tell
me first the brother’s wife’s name and where her home is and what your
name is too.”
Then the mother told him, “It is my brother-in-law who bids me write
the letter to his wife and he lives in a city from whence I am but come
newly, and my name is no matter,” and she gave her husband’s name for
brother and the name of a far city she had known once to be near her
girlhood home, and then for her brother’s wife’s name she gave her own
name and where her hamlet was and she said, “Here is what he has to
tell his wife. Tell her, ‘I am working hard and I have a good place and
I have what I like to eat and a kind master, and all I need to do is to
fetch his pipe and tea and take his messages to his friends. I have my
food and three silver pieces a month besides, and out of my wage I have
saved ten pieces that I have changed to a paper bit as good these days
as silver. Use them for my mother and yourself and the children.’”
Then she sat and waited and the old man wrote slowly and for a long
time and at last he said, “Is that all?”
And she said, “No, I have this more to say. Say, ‘I could not come at
the new year because my master loves me so he could not spare me, but
if I can I will come another year, and if I cannot even so I will send
you my wage as I am able once a year, as much as I can spare.’”
And again the old man wrote and she said when she had thought a while,
“One more thing there is he is to say. Say, ‘Tell my old mother I shall
bring red stuff for her third shroud when I come, as good stout stuff
as can be bought.’”
So the letter was complete and the old man signed the letter and sealed
it and set the superscription and he spat upon a stamp and put it on,
and said that he would post it in the place he knew. And she paid his
fee and went home, and this was the thing she had plotted when she
wiped her tears away.