VIII

Now from her youth up this woman had been ever a creature of deep still

heats. She was not as some women are, quick to look at this young man

and that and appraising any man who passed. No, she was a woman of a

very deep heart, shy to the depths of it, and until she was properly

wed even when she was alone her thoughts had not turned to men for

their own sake, and if strange longings rose from within her deeply she

never looked at them to see what they were or why they came, but she

went on steadfastly to some task she had to do, and bore her longing

patiently and in a waiting silence. Only when she was wed and had known

a man for all he was did some clearness come to her, some distillation

of that deep dumb longing, so that even while she scolded her man

sometimes and was angry with him, she knew she could not live without

him. That thick, impatient longing in her could even heap itself like

thunderous clouds into a causeless anger against the man she loved

until it resolved itself and they clung each to each, and she was

satisfied in the old and simple way and so was made tranquil again.

Yet the man was never enough. In himself he was never enough. She

must conceive by him and feel a child take life and shape within her.

Then was the act complete and while the child moved and grew she went

in a daze of happiness, being fulfilled. Yes, even when she bawled her

little angers at her children when they were under her feet and when

they cried and whimpered for this and that and were wilful as children

must be, yet she never saw the signs of new birth upon herself without

a sweet content of body, as though she were fed and rested and had

slept so that her body wanted nothing more.

So had she ever loved a babe. Even so it had been in the old days when

she was a girl in her father’s house and in a village but a little

larger than this hamlet set in hills. Her father’s house was full of

little children and she was the eldest and like a mother to them; yet

even when she was weary with the day’s toil and the children running

under her feet were a trial to her so that she shouted at them to be

out of her way, yet never even when she shouted was she really out of

love with them. There was always something in their smallness that

weakened her heart, and many a time she would pick up a little child,

whether of their own house or of some neighbor’s, and hold him against

her and smell of him hard and fondle him as long as he would bear it,

because it was some passionate pleasure to her to feel a little child,

although she did not know why.

So everything young and leaning on her drew her heart out. In the

spring she loved the young chicks and ducklings coming from the shell,

and when a mother hen forsook her nest for some cause and left the eggs

half hatched she it was who took the eggs and made a bag and slipped

them against her warm flesh and walked lightly and carefully until the

young chicks hatched. She it was who was most faithful to feed the

small silkworms, and took pleasure in their growing and she watched

them from the time when they were scarcely more than bits of living

thread until they grew great and fat, and when they burst their cocoons

and came forth moths and mated, moth to moth, she felt that seeking and

that satisfaction in her own body.

Once when the children of her father’s house were grown out of babyhood

and she was nearly ready to be wed herself there was a certain thing

that happened to her, and it roused her as no man had ever done yet.

There was one little boy who was too young to walk, a neighbor’s child,

a round fat boy whose elder sister carried him about that whole summer

long, naked and caught in a strip of cloth upon her back. And sometimes

the mother, young then and waiting to be wed, would untie this strip

and take the child from the little girl’s back, and the little girl

would dart off to her play, glad to be released from her burden for a

while.

It came to be so then that every day the young girl, the mother,

grew to look for this little moon-faced boy and out of all the other

children of the village he was the greatest joy to her, her favorite,

and she held him and smelled of his fat palms and took pleasure in his

round cheeks and in his little rosy mouth, and she carried him about

with her, setting him astride her sturdy hip, and when her own mother

cried, “What--had you not enough of children in this house so that when

I am through my bearing you must go and seek another’s child?” she

answered laughing, “I am never weary of babes, I think!”

Soon without her knowing it this child came to rouse in her a longing

she had never known before. Sons she wanted as all women did, and she

had always taken it as her right that she would have sons one day. But

this robust and calm-eyed child roused more than wish of sons in her,

and what had first been play with the child became something more, some

deep and secret passion for what she did not know.

She made excuse then when the child was in her arms to get away with

him alone and all the others were busy here or there in field or

kitchen, and the child’s sister was glad to be away, and the young

girl sat and held the fair sound child strained against herself. She

murmured to him and nursed him in her arms and felt this little,

fat, round body helpless against her. Sometimes, since he was still

nearly toothless, she chewed up rice or a cake for him and thrust the

food into his little lips from hers, and when he sucked it solemnly,

surprised at what he felt in his mouth suddenly, she laughed, but she

did not know why she laughed, for she was not merry, seeing there was

such a fierce, deep, painful longing in her which she did not know how

to ease.

One day soon before her marriage day she had the child thus alone and

it grew late toward noon and the little girl did not come as early

as usual to take the child to his mother to be fed, and the child

fretted and tossed himself and would not be still. Then the young girl,

seeing his hunger, and driven by some dim fierce passion she did not

understand but only felt in her blood urging her on, went into her room

and shut the door fast and with trembling hands she undid her coat and

put the child to her own young slender breast and he laid hold on it

lustily and sucked hard at it. Then she, standing there staring into

his baby face, felt such a tumult in her blood as she had never dreamed

of and the tears came into her eyes and sounds rose to her lips, broken

sounds that were not words, and she held him strained against her and

did not know what it was she felt within herself, full and yearning and

passionate, greater than the child she held, greater than herself.

Then the moment broke. Her little breast was empty and the child wailed

in disappointment and she fastened her coat again and was ashamed

somehow of what she had done and she went quickly out and the little

girl his sister came running in and seized him and ran with him to his

own mother.

But to the young girl the moment was an awakening and more almost than

marriage. Ever after even the man she wed was most to her because he

was a part of motherhood, and not for his own sake only did she love

him.

* * * * *

So had it been with her in her raw youth. Now with her body ripe and

knowing all and herself in all her prime of womanhood she was left,

woman alone, and every day the children grew up taller and every day

they grew further from their babyhood they seemed less her own.

The elder boy shot up tall and thin and silent, and he said little

but strained himself at heavy tasks. When the mother would have taken

up the rude wooden plough to carry it back to the house at the end

of the day, he seized it and held it like a yoke across his own thin

shoulders and staggered with it over the clodded earth, and she was so

weary oftentimes she let him do it. He it was now who pulled the pails

of water from the well and fed the buffalo, and he struggled his whole

share and more in the field, as though he were his own father.

Yet in all this he strained away from the woman, his mother, in some

secret way, sharing with her in the labor most dutifully, and yet often

wilful too, and it seemed to her he was parted from her flesh in some

way she could not understand, not liking to be near her and standing

off as though there were some smell about her that he could not bear.

Oftentimes they quarreled over a slight cause, such as if she bade

him hold his hoe better and he would not but would hold it in his own

way, even though it was harder to wield when he held it so. Over such a

small thing they quarreled and over many other like small things. Yet

each knew dimly that this was not the true cause of quarrel either, but

some deeper thing which neither could perceive.

The girl, too, was never any cause of joy to her, with her poor eyes

half blind. Still the child did her patient best and she complained

no more now as she once did, and now that the younger boy could walk

and run and loved best to be in the street brawling and playing with

others like him, the girl would come sometimes to the field where the

mother and the lad worked. But even there she was more care than help,

especially if it were in some field of small weak seedlings, for she

was so blind that when she would have pulled the weeds she did not see

them well and many a time she pulled a seedling, thinking it a weed, so

that the boy called out in anger, “Go home, you girl, for I do swear

you are no use to us here. Go and sit beside the old grandmother!”

And when she rose at this, half smiling but deeply hurt too, he cried

at her again shrilly, “Now see where you tread, you clumsy thing, for

you are walking on the seedlings now!”

So she made haste to get out of the field then, too proud to stay, and

the mother was torn between these two, her son and the poor half blind

girl, and she felt the hearts of both, the lad’s heart weary with

labor too bitter for his age, and the girl’s too patient with her pain,

and she said sighing, as the girl went away, “It is true, poor thing,

you are very little use, nor even can you sew with those eyes as they

are. But go you home and sweep the floor and set the food ready and

light the fire. Such things you do well enough. Watch the little one

and see he does not fall in the pond, for he is the boldest, wilfulest

of you all, and pour a little tea sometimes for the old one. There your

duty is and you are help to me there. And when I have a little time I

will go and seek a balm of some kind for your eyes.”

So she comforted the girl, but the girl was little comfort to her,

sitting silent hour after hour and wiping her wet aching lids, and

smiling in her fixed and patient way. And looking at her sometimes

and hearing her lad’s angers and seeing the younger one’s eagerness

to be away at play, the mother wondered bitterly how it could be that

when they were babes they were so fair and pleasant to her, and now no

comfort.

Yes, oftentimes in the evening this mother looked across the way to her

cousin’s house and envied it most sorely. There was the good and honest

husband, a plain and earth-soiled man, not clean and pretty as her man

had been, but still well enough and going to his daily work and coming

home to be fed and to sleep as men should, and there were his children

he begot regularly and well, and there the mother sat, easy and merry

and well content with her last babe upon her knees, a shallow merry

soul and her mouth always open and her tongue clacking, but kindly

and a good neighbor. Often she ran to share some bit of meat with the

mother, or gave the children a handful of fruit, or a little paper

flower she made for the girl to thrust into her hair. It was a good,

full, contented house, and the mother envied it, and in her the longing

grew, deep and sullen and unsatisfied.