Crazed with her weariness was the mother when she came down from the
halting gray ass that night before her own door. She had wept all the
way home, now aloud and now softly, and the young man had been beside
himself again and again with his mother’s weeping. He cried out in an
agony at last, “Cease your wailing, mother, or I shall not be able to
bear it!”
But when she calmed herself a little for his sake she broke forth again
and at last the young man ground his teeth together and he muttered
wildly, “If the day were come, if we were not so miserably poor, if the
poor were given their share and could defend themselves, then might we
sue for my sister’s life! But what use when we are so poor and there is
no justice in the land?”
And the mother sobbed out, “It is true there is no use in going to law
since we have no money to pay our way in to justice,” and then she wept
afresh and cried, “But all the money and the justice under heaven would
not bring my blind maid back again.”
At last the young man wept too, not so much for his sister nor even
for his mother, but because he was so footsore and so worn and his
world awry.
Thus they came at last to their own door and when she was down from the
ass the mother called her elder son piercingly and so sharply that he
came running out and she cried, “Son, your sister is dead!” And while
he stared at her scarcely comprehending, she poured out the tale, and
at the sound of her voice others came quickly to hear the tale until
there in the dusk of night nearly all the hamlet stood to hear it. The
younger son stood there half fainting, leaning on the ass, and when
his mother talked on he went and threw himself upon the ground and lay
there dazed with what had come about this day, and he lay silent while
his mother wept and cried aloud and in her weeping said, looking with
her streaming eyes to this face and to that, “There my little maid was,
dead and gone, and I hate myself I ever let her go, and I would not
have let her go if it had not been for this cold-hearted son’s wife of
mine who begrudged the little maid a bit of meat and a little flower on
her shoe and so I was fearful if I died and the maid was afraid, too--a
little tender child who never would have left me of her own will!
What cared she for man or marriage and a child’s heart in her always,
clinging to her home and me? Oh, son, it is your wife who has brought
this on me--I curse the day she came and no wonder she is childless
with so hard a heart!”
So on and on the mother cried and at first they all listened in
silence or exclaiming something when they had pieced the tale from what
she said between her weeping, and then they tried to comfort her, but
she would not let herself be comforted. The eldest son said nothing but
stood with downcast head until she cursed his wife and spoke against
her child-bearing, and then he said in a reasonable and quiet voice,
“No, mother, she did not bid you send my sister to that place. You
sent her so quickly and did not say a word to anyone but fixed it so
and we wondered even that you did not go and see how it was there for
yourself,” and he turned to his father’s cousin and he said, “Did you
not think so, cousin? Do you remember how I said we were surprised my
mother was so quick in the matter?”
And the cousin turned his eyes away and muttered unwillingly, chewing a
bit of straw, “Oh, aye, a little quick,” and his wife who stood holding
a grandchild in her arms said mournfully to the mother, “Yes, it is
true, sister, you be a very quick woman always, and never asking anyone
if this or that is well to be done. No, before any of us know it or
guess what it is you are about you have done all and it is finished,
and you only want us to say you have done well. It is your nature all
your life to be like this.”
But the mother could not bear blame this night and she cried out in
anger, and so turned her working angry face upon her cousin’s wife,
“You--you are used to that slow man of yours, and if we must be all
judged too quick by such as he--”
And it looked for a time as though these two women who had been friends
all their lives would fall to bitter words now, except that the cousin
was so good and peaceable a man that when he saw his wife’s great
face grow red and that she was gathering up her wits to make a very
biting answer he called out, “Let be, mother of my sons! She is sore
with sorrow tonight and well beside herself.” And after he had chewed
a while upon his straw, he added mildly, “It is true that I am a very
slow man and I have heard it many times since I was born, and you have
told me so, too, mother of my sons.... Aye, I be slow.” And he looked
around upon his neighbors and one called out earnestly, “Aye, goodman,
you are a very slow-moving man for sure, and slow in wits and slow to
speak!”
“Aye,” said the cousin sighing a little and spitting out the shattered
straw he chewed and plucking out a fresh one from the stack of rice
straw near which he stood.
So was the quarrel averted. But the mother was not eased and suddenly
her eye fell on the old gossip standing in the crowd, her mouth ajar
and eyes staring and all her old hanging face listening to what went
on. Seeing her the mother’s anger and pain broke out afresh and it all
came out mingled with her agony and she rushed at the gossip and fell
on her and tore at her large fat face and snatched at her hair and
screamed at her and said, “Yes, and you knew what those folk were and
you knew the son was witless, and you never said a word of it but told
a tale of how they were plain country folk like us, and you never said
my maid must go up and down that rocky path to fetch water for them
all--it is all on you and I swear I shall not rest myself until I have
made you pay for it somehow--”
And she belabored the gossip who was no match for the distraught mother
even at the best of times and there is no knowing how it might have
come about at the end if the son had not flown to part them and if the
younger son had not risen too and with his elder brother held their
mother so that the old gossip could make haste away, although she must
needs stand, too, for honor’s sake when she had gone a distance and far
enough so there were those who stood between them, and then she stopped
and cried, “Yes, but your maid was blind and what proper man would have
her? I did you a very good turn, goodwife, and here be all the thanks I
get for it.” And she beat her own breast and pointed to the scratches
on her face and fell to weeping and working herself up for a better
quarrel.
But the crowd hastened her away, and the sons urged the mother into
the house and they forced her gently in and led her there, she weeping
still. But she was spent at last and let them lead her to her room, and
when she was come and they had sat her down, the son’s wife fetched
her a bowl of water very hot and soothing and she had been heating it
while the quarrel went on. Now she dipped a towel in it and wiped the
mother’s face and hands and poured hot tea out and set food ready.
Then little by little the mother let herself be calmed and she wept
more silently and sighed a while and drank a little tea and supped her
food and at last she looked about and said, “Where is my little son?”
The young man came forward then and she saw how deathly pale he was and
weary and all his merry looks gone for the time, and she pressed him
down beside her on the bench and held his hand and urged him to eat and
rest himself and she said, “Sleep here beside me tonight, my little
son, and on the pallet where your sister used to lie. I cannot have it
empty this night, my son.” And so the lad did and he slept heavily the
moment that he laid himself down.
But even when the house was quiet the mother could not sleep for long.
She was spent to her core, her body spent with the long ride and all
her heart’s weariness, and the only thing that comforted her was to
hear the lad’s deep breathing as he lay there. And she thought of him
then with new love and thought, “I must do more for him. He is the last
I have. I must wed him and we will build a new room on the house. He
shall have a room for himself and his woman, and then when children
come--yes, I must find a good, lusty wife for him so that somehow we
shall have children in the house.”
And this thought of little children yet to come was the only comfort
she could see in her whole life ahead of her.
* * * * *
But doubtless even this comfort might not have lasted except that her
old flux laid hold on her again and made her weak as death, too weak to
mourn. She lay there on her bed for many days, purged body and heart,
and all her sorrow and her comfort too in abeyance because she was not
strong enough to mourn or hope. Many there were who came to exhort her,
her neighbors and her cousin’s wife and they said, “Goodwife, after all
the child was blind,” and they said, “Goodwife, what heaven has made
for us we cannot change and it is useless to mourn for anything in this
life.” And they said, “Remember your good sons,” and one day when the
cousin’s wife said this the mother answered faintly, “Yes, but my elder
son’s wife she does not bear, and my younger son he will not wed.” And
the cousin’s wife answered heartily, “Give the elder son’s wife a year
or two, cousin, for sometimes when seven years are passed barren, a
woman will come to her true nature and bear a harvest of good children,
for I have seen it so, and as for the lad’s saying he will not wed,
why then he has a love somewhere, and we must find out who she is, and
if she is fit for him to wed or not. Yes, truly has he found a love,
as young folks will these days, for never was there a man in all the
world, I swear, who would not wed!”
But the mother whispered, “Bend down your ear, sister, and put it
against my lips,” and when the cousin’s wife had done this the mother
whispered, “Since sorrow follows me and everything goes wrong with
me, I fear sometimes it is that old sin of mine that the gods know
about--perhaps heaven will not give me grandsons!” And when she thought
of this she closed her eyes and two great tears came out from under her
closed lids. She thought of all her sins, not only the one the cousin’s
wife knew of, but all the many times she had said she was widow and the
letters that she wrote and all the lies. Not that she held the lies
pure sin, since all must lie a little now and then for honor’s sake,
but here the sin was, that she had lied and said her man was dead.
Almost was it now when she thought of it as if she had put her hand
forth and brought his death on him, and she had used this lie of death
to hope another man would have her. So all these sins of hers, so old
she could forget them many days together when she was well, came back
fresh and now when she was weak and sorrowful, the heavier because she
could not tell them all but must carry them in herself, and heaviest
because she was a woman held in good repute among her fellows.
She grew so low in mind that nothing cheered her much except to have
her younger son about her. Yes, although the elder son’s wife tended
her most carefully and brought her food ready and hot when she would
have it and even walked a mile or two to another village to fetch a
certain sort of dried curd they made there from beans, and although
the mother leaned on her in every sort of way and called to her if she
would so much as turn herself in her bed, yet the son’s wife was no
comfort to her, and often when she did her most careful best the mother
would scold her that her hands were cold or her face so yellow and
stare at her in some half hostile, childish way. But still the older
woman never blamed the son’s wife any more that she was childless. No,
she said no more of that, believing somehow dimly that her own sins
might be the cause.
But she rose from her bed at last, and when the autumn was well gone
the sharpness of her pain had ebbed with it and she was dreary all day
long but not frantic, and she could think of her maid, but the edge of
pain was gone. At last she even said to her own heart, “Aye, perhaps
even what they say is true, perhaps it is better that my maid is dead.
There are so many things worse than death.”
And she held fast to this one thought.
And all the hamlet helped her. No one ever spoke of the maid again
before her, nor doubtless anywhere, since there is nothing to be
remembered in a blind maid and there are many like her everywhere.
First they did not speak of her where the mother was, to spare the
mother pain, and then they did not speak because there was naught new
to tell of it, and because other news came of other things and people,
and the maid’s little life was ended.
For a while the gossip went carefully where the mother was and took
thought not to be alone with her, but when she saw how feeble the
mother was when she rose up from her bed, she grew cheerful then and
called out greeting as she ever had.
And the mother let the past be silent, except sometimes in her own
heart.