Now all this hatred gathered in the elder son and even the mother did
not know how deep it was until a certain day when out it came, bursting
forth like a river dammed behind a dyke and swollen with waters from
small secret sources that men do not know, so that when it breaks they
are astonished because none knew how it had been with that river all
the days when it had seemed the same.
It was at the time of the rice harvest at the end of a summer when all
must labor hard and heavily upon the land from dawn to dark, and so
everyone must labor who is not rich enough to hire it done for him. Now
the young lad had labored that day, too, although he usually thought of
some distant thing he had to do elsewhere. But this time the mother had
coaxed him to it and she had said to him secretly, smoothing his bony
lad’s hand while she talked, “Work well for these few days, my son,
while the harvest lasts, and show your brother how well you can do,
and if you will work well and please him then I will buy you something
pretty when the work is done, something that you want most.”
So the lad promised he would, pouting his red lips and feeling himself
hard used, and he worked well enough, although not too well, yet well
enough to save his skin when his brother’s eye fell on him.
But that day when a rain threatened before the sheaves were in, they
all worked beyond the usual hour and the mother worked until she was
spent, for she had never been so tireless as she was before she ate the
bitter herbs to save her honor that dark night. Then she sighed and
straightened her aching back and said, “My son, I will go home and see
the food is heated for you when you come, for I am spent and sore.”
“Go home, then,” said the elder son a little roughly, yet not meaning
to be so, for he never urged his mother to do more than she would. So
she went then, and left the brothers alone, for the hour grew too late
even for the gleaners who had followed them by day.
Scarcely had she set the food to boiling when the maid cried out from
where she sat upon the threshold that she heard her little brother
weeping, and when the mother ran out of the kitchen it was so and she
ran to the harvest field and there upon the reaped grain the elder son
was beating the younger one most mercilessly with the handle of his
scythe, and the younger one was howling and striking back with his two
fists and struggling to loose himself from his brother’s hard grasp
about his neck. But the elder brother held him fast and beat him with
the dull end of the handle. Then the mother ran with all her strength
and clung to the angry elder son and begged of him, “Oh, my son, a
little lad he is yet--Oh, son. Oh, son!”
And as she clung like this the younger slipped out from the elder’s
hand and ran swift as a young hare across the field and disappeared
into the dusk. There were these two left, the mother and her bitter
elder son. Then she faltered, “He is such a child yet, son, only
fourteen and with his mind still on play.”
But the young man replied, “Was I child at fourteen? Did I play at
harvest time when I was fourteen and needed I to have you bribe me with
a ring and a new robe and this and that I had not earned?”
Then she knew the silly younger lad had boasted of what he would have
and she stood speechless, caught in her fault, staring at her son and
silent, and he went on and cried, his bitterness bursting from him,
“Yes, you keep the money, and I give you all we earn. I never take a
penny for my own, not even to smoke a little pipe of any kind or take
a bowl of wine or buy myself anything a young man might have and count
it but his due. Yet you must promise him all I never had! And for what?
To do the labor that he ought to do for nothing and to pay for what he
eats and wears!”
“I did not promise rings and robes,” she said in a low and troubled
voice, half afraid of this angry son of hers who was so grave and quiet
on other days that she did not know him now.
“You did!” he said most passionately. “Or if not that, then worse, for
he said he was to have what he wanted when the harvest money was in and
taxes paid. He said you promised!”
“I meant some small toy or other, costing but a penny or so,” she
answered, shamed before this good son of hers. And then plucking up
her courage--for was he not her son still?--she added, “And if I did
promise a little toy it was but to save him from your angers on him
always, whatever he may do, so that you keep him down with all your
cruel looks and words--and now blows!”
But he would say no more. He fell to the sheaves again and worked as
though some demon had him, he worked so hard and fast. The mother stood
looking at him, not knowing what to do, feeling he was hard, too, with
her little son, and yet knowing somehow she was wrong. Then as she
looked she saw the young man was very near to tears, so that he set his
jaws hard to keep back a sob, and when she saw this sign of feeling
in him, such as she had never seen in him who always seemed so usual
and content and without any desire, her heart grew soft as ever it did
when she had harmed a child of hers, although he did not know it, and
she softened to him more than she had ever done before and she cried
quickly, “Son, I am wrong, I know. I have not done well enough for you
of late. I have not seen how you have grown into a man. But man you
are, and now I see it, and you shall take the man’s place in our house
and you shall have the money and the chief place in name as well as
in the labor you have always done. Yes, I see you are a man now, and I
will do straightway what I have put off too long. I will find a wife
for you and it will be your turn now and hers. I have not seen it, but
now I see it well.”
So she made amends. He muttered something then that she could not hear
and turned his back and said no more but worked on. But she felt eased
by her amends and went back crying briskly, “Well, and all the rice
will be burned, I swear--” and this she said to cover up the feeling of
the moment and make it usual.
But when she was home again she busied herself here and there
forgetting all her weariness, and when the maid asked, “Mother, what
was wrong?” she answered quickly, “Nothing much amiss, child, except
your younger brother would not do his share, or so his brother said.
But brothers always quarrel, I think,” and she ran and made an extra
dish from some radishes she pulled, and sliced them and poured vinegar
upon them and sesame oil and soy sauce, such as she knew her son loved.
And as she worked she pondered her amends and it seemed true to her her
son should wed and she blamed herself because she had leaned on him as
on a man, and yet he had not man’s reward, and she set her mind to do
all that she had said she would.
Her elder son came in at last and later than usual so that it was
wholly dark and she could not see his face until he came within the
light of the candle she had lit and set ready on the table. She looked
at him closely then, without his seeing her, and she saw he was himself
again and pleased with what she had said and all his anger gone. And
seeing this peace upon her elder son she called to the younger one who
hung about the door, not daring to come in until he knew his brother’s
temper, and yet driven by hunger, too, and she called out, “Come in,
little son!”
And he came in, his eyes upon his brother. But the elder paid no heed
to him, his anger gone for this time, and the mother was well content
and knew she had decided well and so she moved to carry out her promise
to the end.
* * * * *
And as she ever did in any little trouble, she went to the cousin and
to the cousin’s wife, for she herself knew no maid, since none in that
hamlet could be chosen, seeing all were kin by blood and marriage and
had the same surname, nor did she know any maid in town, for there she
had dealings only with such small shops as bought the little she had
to sell. She went at an hour in evening, for the year was yet warm
although early autumn was near, and they sat and talked while the
cousin’s wife suckled her last child. The mother made known her want at
last and said, “Then do you know any maid, my sister, in that village
where you lived before you were wed? A maid like yourself I would like
very well, easy tempered and quick to bear and good enough at labor.
The house I can tend myself yet for many a year, and if she be not so
good in the house I can endure it.”
The good cousin’s wife laughed at this loudly and looked at her man and
cried, “I do not know if he would say your son would count it curse or
blessing to have one like me.”
Then the man looked up in his slow way, a bit of rice stalk in his
mouth which he had sat chewing as he listened, and he answered
thoughtfully, “Oh, aye--good enough--” and his wife laughed again to
hear his luke-warmness and then she said, “Well, and I can go there and
see, sister, and there are two hundred families or so in that village,
a market-town it is, and doubtless one maid among so many ready to be
wed.”
So they talked on of it and the mother said plainly there must not be
too great a cost, and she said, “I know very well I cannot hope for one
of the very best in every way, since I am poor and my son has no great
lot of land and we must rent more than we own.”
But the man spoke up and said to this, “Well, but you do own some land,
and it is something nowadays when many have nothing at all, and I had
liefer wed a maid of mine to a man who has some land and little silver
than to one who has much silver and no firm land to stand on. A good
man and good land--that would be sound promise for any maid if she were
mine.” And when his wife said, “Well, then, children’s father, if you
will let me go, I can go to that town a day or two, and look about,”
then he said in his spare way, “Oh, aye, I will--the maids are old
enough to free you now and then.”
So soon thereafter the cousin’s wife dressed herself clean and took
the babe and a child or two among the little ones to show her father’s
family and she took an elder two or so to help her with the little
ones, and hired a wheelbarrow to put them all upon and she rode her
husband’s gray ass he did not need these days now that the harvest
was over and he could use his ox to tread the grain. They set forth
thus and were gone three days and more. And when she was come back she
was right full of all the maids that she had seen and she said to the
mother, who ran to hear her when the news came she had returned,
“Maids there be a plenty in that village for we never kill them there
as they do in some towns when babes are girls, and they are allowed to
grow however many a mother has, and so the village is full of them.
I saw a dozen that I knew myself, sister, all well grown and full of
flesh and color, and any would have done for any son I have. But still
only one was needed and I narrowed my two eyes and looked at this
one and that one, and chose out three, and out of the three I looked
again and saw one had a cough and a bubbly nose, and one was with some
soreness of the eyes, and the third was best. She is a sharp and clever
maid, I swear, very careful in all she says and does, and they say she
is the quickest seamstress in the town. She makes her own clothes and
clothes for all her father’s house and some for others and turns a bit
of silver in. A little old she is, perhaps, for your lad, because once
she was betrothed, and the man died out of time, or she would be wed by
now. But this is not ill, either, for the father is eager to wed her
somehow and will not ask much for her. She is not so pretty perhaps as
the others--her face a little yellow from sewing overmuch, but she is
clean-eyed.”
Then the mother answered quickly, “We have sore eyes enough in our
house, I swear, and my eyes are not what they were either, and we need
someone who sews and likes it. Settle it then, my sister, with this
one, and if she is not above five years older than my son, it is well
enough.”
So was it done, and the days of the month and the years in which
the two were born and the hours of their birth were compared upon a
geomancer’s table in the town, and they were all favorable. The young
man was born under the sign of horse, and the maid under the sign of
cat, which do not devour each other, and thus was harmony foretold in
the marriage. All things being right by destiny, therefore, the gifts
that must be given were given.
Now out of her little hidden store the mother brought forth bits of
silver and odd copper coins and she bought good cotton stuffs and made
two garments for the maid, herself. And as the custom was in those
parts she wished a lucky woman to cut the garments, some woman whose
life was whole with man and sons. What woman then was more lucky in the
hamlet than the cousin’s wife? The mother took the good stuff to her
and said, “Set your hand here, my sister, so that your luck may fall
upon my son’s wife.”
And so the cousin’s wife did, and she cut the garments wide and full
across the belly so that when the maid conceived they could be worn
with ease and not laid aside to waste.
And the mother put forth more silver and hired the red marriage chair
and the bead crown and the earrings of false pearls and all that was
needful for the day, and especially the trousers of red which every
bride must wear in those parts. So was the marriage day set and it drew
on, and dawned at last, a clear cold day in the winter of that year.
Now was it a strange day for this mother when she must welcome to her
house a new and younger woman, so long had she been master there as
well as mistress. When she was dressed in her best and stood waiting at
her door, when she saw the red bridal chair come near with its burden
of the bride within, it seemed suddenly but a little while ago when
she herself had come in that same chair, and the old woman dead stood
where she stood today and her own man where her son stood. Rarely did
she think these days of that man of hers, and truly did he seem dead
to her, but the strangest longing fell on her for him while she stood
waiting. It was not the longing of the flesh; no, that was dead and
gone now. It was some other longing, the longing for some completeness
of her own age, for she felt alone.
She looked at her son newly, no longer only son to her, but husband to
another now, and there he stood, very still, his head hung down, stiff
in the new black robe she had made for him, and shoes upon his feet
most often bare. He seemed unmoved, or so she thought until she saw his
hanging hands trembling against the black of his robe. She sighed again
then, and again she thought of her own man and how she had peeped out
at him from behind the curtains of her chair and how her heart leaped
to see how fair he was and how good a man to look on in every way.
Yes, he had been prettier far than this son of hers was today, and she
thought to herself now that he was the prettiest man she had ever seen.
But before she had time to grieve more than in this dim way the first
of the procession came, the small wedding fruits, the cock she had sent
to the bride’s house and that according to custom they sent back and
with it a hen they mated to it, and after these few things, the chair
was fetched and set down there before the door and the cousin’s wife
and the gossip and the other elder women of the hamlet took the bride’s
hand and tried to pull her forth. And she was proper and reluctant and
came at last but most unwillingly, and when she did come she made her
eyes downcast and did not look up once. Then the mother withdrew into
her cousin’s house, as was the custom too in those parts where it was
said a son’s wife must not see too easily her husband’s mother, lest
she do not fear her thereafter, and all that day the mother stayed in
the cousin’s house.
But still she stayed near the door to hear what people said of this new
wife, and she heard some cry, “A very good and earnest-looking maid,”
and some said, “They say she sews well, and if it is true she made
those shoes she wears, she has ten good fingers, I swear!” And some
among the women went up and fingered the red wedding robes and lifted
the coat to see the inner ones, and all were well and neatly made, and
the buttons hard and nicely turned of twisted cloth, and they ran and
told the mother all, “A decent, able maid, goodwife, and with a proper
look.” But some among the men spoke coarsely and one said, “Too thin
and yellow for my taste, I swear!” and another called out, “Aye, but a
few months will mend the thinness, brother--naught like a man to make a
maid swell!”
And in all this merry, ribald talk the maid moved demurely to her new
home and so was wed.
* * * * *
Now must the mother leave the bed where she had slept these many years,
and when the daughter-in-law came to make the bed for the mother that
night, for so it was done in those parts, she made the pallet where
the old dead woman once had slept behind the curtains, and later the
elder son; and the blind girl had a pallet of her own beside it, and
the younger lad slept in the kitchen if he slept at home. Yes, upon the
true bed the elder son slept now with his new wife.
It was not easy either for the mother to give up to this new pair that
place which had been hers and her man’s, and it made her seem old to
herself at night to lie on the old woman’s pallet. Through the day she
could be usual, busy everywhere, commanding all, her tongue quick to
correct and command, but at night she was old. Oftentimes she woke and
it seemed to her it could not be she who lay there and the other pair
upon the bed, and she thought to herself amazed, “Now I suppose that
old soul who was mother when I came to this house felt as I do now,
when I came a bride and pushed her from her bed and lay there with her
son in my turn. And now another lies with my son.”
It seemed so strange, so endless, this turning of some hidden wheel,
this passing on of link caught onto link in some never ending chain
that she was dazed with thinking of it even dimly, since she was not
one to think into the meanings of what passed before her, but only
taking all that came for what it was. But she was lessened in her own
eyes from that day on. Even though she was in name the oldest and the
first and mistress over all, she was not first in her own eyes.
And she watched this son’s wife. She was dutiful and day after day
she made her bow before her husband’s mother, until the mother grew
weary and shouted at her, “Enough!” But the mother could not find any
fault in her. Then was this very faultlessness a fault and the mother
muttered, “Well, and doubtless she has some secret inner fault I do not
see at once.”
For the son’s wife did not, as some maids do, set forth all that she
was at once. She was diligent and she was smooth and quick at work and
when the work was done she sat and sewed on something for her husband
but all she did was done in her own careful way.
Now there are not two women in this world who do the same task alike,
and this the mother had not known, thinking all did as she did. But no,
this son’s wife had her own way of doing all. When she cooked the rice
she put too much water in, or so the mother thought, and the rice came
out softer than the mother was used or liked to have it. And she told
the son’s wife so, but that one shut her pale lips smoothly and said,
“But so I ever do it.” And she would not change.
Thus it was with everything. This and that about the house she changed
to her own liking, not quickly nor in any temper, but in a small,
careful, gradual way, so that it gave the mother no handle to lay her
anger on. There was another thing. The young wife did not like the
smell of beasts at night, and made complaint, but not to the older
woman, only to the man, until he set to work that same winter to add a
room to the house where they could move the bed in and sleep alone.
And the older woman looked on astonished at such new ways.
At first she said to the blind maid that she would not be angry with
the son’s wife. And indeed it was not easy to be angry quickly, for the
young wife did well and worked carefully, so that it was hard to say
“this is wrong” or “you did not do that well.” But there were things
the mother hated somehow, though most she loathed the softened rice and
of it she grumbled often and at last aloud, “I never do feel full and
fed with such soft stuff. There is naught to set my teeth down on--this
watery stuff, it passes my belly like a wind and does not lie like firm
good food.” And when she saw her son’s wife pay no heed to this she
went secretly to her son one day where he worked in the field and there
she said, “Son, why do you not bid her cook the rice more dry and hard?
I thought you used to like it so.”
The son stopped his labor then and stayed himself a moment on his hoe
and said in his calm way, “I like it as she does it very well.”
Then the mother felt her anger rise and she said, “You did not use to
like it so and it means you have joined yourself to her instead of me.
It is shameful that you like her so and go against your mother.”
Then the red came flooding into the young man’s face and he said
simply, “Aye, I like her well enough,” and fell to his hoe again.
From that day on the mother knew the two were masters in the house.
The eldest son was not less kind than usual and he did his work well
and took the money into his own hand. It was true he did not spend it,
nor did his wife, for the two were a saving pair, but they were man and
wife and this their house and land, and to them the mother was but the
old woman in the house. It was true that if she spoke of field or seed
and of all the labor that she knew so well because it had been hers,
they let her speak, but yet when she had finished it was as though she
had not spoken, and they made their plans and carried all on as they
liked. It seemed to her she was nothing any more, her wisdom less than
nothing in the house that had been hers.
Very bitter was it for anyone to bear and when the new room was made
and the pair moved into it, the mother muttered to the blind girl who
slept beside her, “I never saw such finicking as this, as though the
honest smell of beasts was poison! I do swear they made that room so
they could be away from us and talk their plans we cannot hear. They
never tell me anything. It is not the beasts--it is that your brother
loves her shamefully. Yes, they care nothing for you or for your little
brother, nor even for me, I know.” And when the girl did not answer she
said, “Do you not think so, too, my maid? Am I not right?”
Then the maid hesitated and she said after a while out of the darkness,
“Mother, it is true I have something to say I would say and yet I
would not, lest it grieve you.”
Then the mother cried out, “Say on, child. I am used to grief, I think.”
And then the maid asked in a small sad voice, “Mother, what will you do
with me, blind as I am?”
Now all this time the mother had not thought otherwise than that this
maid would live on here with her a while at least and she said in
surprise, “What do you mean, my maid?”
And the maid said, “I do not mean my brother’s wife is not kind--she is
not cruel, mother. But I think she does not dream you will not wed me
soon. I heard her ask my little brother but the other day where I was
betrothed, and when he said I was not she said surprised, ‘A great maid
to be without a mother-in-law still.’”
“But you are blind, child,” said the mother, “and it is not so easy to
wed a blind maid.”
“I know it,” said the maid gently. And after a while she spoke again,
and this time as though her mouth were very dry and as though her
breath came hot. “But you know there are many things I can do, mother,
and there may be some very poor man, a widower, perhaps, or some such
poor man who would be glad of the little I could do if he need pay
nothing for me, and then would I be in my own house and there would be
someone if you were gone whom I could care for. Mother, I do not think
my sister wants me.”
But the mother answered violently, “Child, I will not have you go to
mend some man’s house like that! We are poor, I know, but you can be
fed. Widowers are often the hardest and lustiest husbands, child. So go
to sleep and think no more of this. Hearty I am yet and likely to live
a long full time yet, and your brother was never cruel to you, even as
a child.”
“He was not wed then, mother,” said the girl, sighing. But she stayed
silent then and seemed to sleep.
But the mother could not sleep a while, although on usual nights she
slept deep and sound. She lay there thinking hard, and taking up the
days past, one by one, to see if what the girl had said was true, and
though she could not think of any single thing, it seemed to her the
son’s wife was not warm. No, she was not very warm to the younger lad
either, and at least not warm to this blind sister in her husband’s
house, and here was new bitterness for the mother to bear.