But one day he did not come when he said he would. And how did she
know he would surely come? Because but three days before he had come
secretly and by night, walking across the field paths and not through
the village, and he scratched lightly on her door, so she was half
afraid to open it, thinking it might be robbers. Even as she was about
to call out she heard his voice low and quick and luckily the fowls
stirred by her bed where they roosted and hid it from the hearing of
the elder son and his wife.
She rose then as fast as she could, fumbling her clothes and feeling
for the candle, and when she opened the door softly, for she knew
it must be for a secret thing he came at such an hour and in such a
way, there he was with two other young men, all dressed in the same
way he went dressed these days, in black. They had a great bundle of
something tied up in paper and rope and when she opened the door with
the light in her hand, her son blew the light out for there was a faint
moon, enough to see by, and when she cried out but still softly in her
pleasure to see him, he said in a whisper, “Mother, there is something
of my own I must put under your bed among the winter garments there.
Say nothing of it, for I do not want anyone to know it is there. I will
come and fetch it again.”
Her heart misgave her somehow when she heard this and she opened her
eyes and said soberly, holding her voice low as his, “Son, it is not
an ill thing, I hope--I hope you have not taken something that is not
yours.”
But he answered hastily, “No, no, mother, nothing robbed, I swear. It
is some sheepskins I had the chance to buy cheap, but my brother will
blame me for them for he blames me for everything, and I have nowhere
to put them. I bought them very cheap and you shall have one next
winter, mother, for a coat--we will all wear good clothes next winter!”
She was mightily pleased then and trusted him when he said they were
not robbed and it was a joy to her to share a little secret with this
son of hers and she said hastily, “Oh, aye, trust me, son! There be
many things in this room that my son and son’s wife do not know.”
Then the two men brought the bundle in and they pushed it silently
under the bed, and the fowls cackled and stared and the buffalo woke
and began to chew its cud.
But the son would not stay at all, and when the mother saw his haste
she wondered but she said, “Be sure I will keep them safe, my son, but
ought they not to be aired and sunned against the moth?”
To this he answered carelessly, “It is but for a day or two, for we
are moving to a larger place and then I shall have a room of my own and
plenty.”
When she heard this talk of much room, there was that thought in her
mind she had always of his marriage, and she drew him aside somewhat
from the other two and looked at him beseechingly. It was the one thing
about him that did not please her, that he was not willing for her to
wed him, because she well knew what hot blood was and there was sign in
this son of her own heat when she was young, and she knew he must sate
it somehow and she grudged the waste. Better if he were wed to some
clean maid and she could have her grandsons. Now even in the haste of
the moment when he was eager to be gone, and the other two waiting in
the shadows by the door, even now she laid her hand on his hand and she
said coaxingly, her voice still whispering, “But, son, if you have so
much room, then why not let me find a maid? I will find the best pretty
maid I can--or if you know one, then tell me and let me ask my cousin’s
wife to be the one to make the match. I would not force you, son, if it
be the one you like is one that I would like too.”
But the young man shook his long locks from his eyes and looked toward
the door, and tried to shift her hand away. But she held him fast and
coaxed again, “Why should your good heats be spent on wild weeds here
and there, my son, and give me no good grandsons? Your brother’s wife
is so cold I think there will never be children on my knees unless
you put them there. Aye, you are like your own father, and well I know
what he was. Plant your seeds in your own land, my son, and reap the
harvests for your own house!”
But the young man laughed silently and tossed his hair back again from
those glittering eyes of his and said half wondering, “Old women like
you, mother, think of nothing but weddings and births of children, and
we--we young ones nowadays have cast away all that.... In three days,
mother!”
He pulled himself away then and was gone, walking with the other two
across the dimly lighted fields.
But three days passed and he did not come. And three more came and went
and yet three more, and the mother grew afraid and wondered if some
ill had come upon her son. But now in this last year she had not gone
easily to the town and so she waited, peevish with all who came near
her, not daring to tell what her fears were, and not daring either
to leave her room far lest her son’s careful wife chance to draw the
curtains aside and see the bundle under her bed.
One night as she lay sleepless with her wondering she rose and lit
the candle and stooped and peered under the bed, holding the parted
curtains with one hand. There the thing was, wrapped in thick paper,
shaped large and square and tied fast with hempen rope. She pressed
it and felt of it and there was something hard within, not sheepskin
surely.
“It should be taken out to sun, if it is sheepskin,” she muttered,
sore at the thought of waste if the moth should creep in and gnaw good
skins. But she did not dare to open it and so she let it be. And still
her son did not come.
So passed the days until a month was gone and she was near beside
herself and would have been completely so, except that something came
to wean her mind somewhat from her fears. It was the last thing she
dreamed of nowadays and it was that her son’s wife conceived.
Yes, after all these cool years the woman came to herself and did her
duty. The elder son went to his mother importantly one day as she sat
in the doorway and said, his lean face all wrinkled with his smiles,
“Mother, you shall have a grandson.”
She came out of the heavy muse in which she spent her days now and
stared at him out of eyes grown a little filmy and said peevishly,
“You speak like a fool. Your wife is cold as any stone and as barren
and where my little son is I do not know and he scatters his good seed
anywhere and will not wed and save it.”
Then the elder son coughed and said plainly, “Your son’s wife has
conceived.”
At first the mother would not believe it. She looked at this elder son
of hers and then she shouted, pulling at her staff to raise herself
upon her feet, “She has not--I never will believe it!”
But she saw by his face that it was true and she rose and went as
fast as she could and found her son’s wife who was chopping leeks in
the kitchen and she peered at the young woman and she cried, “Have you
something in you then at last?”
The wife nodded and went on with her work, her pale face spotted with
dull red, and then the mother knew it to be true. She said, “How long
have you known?”
“Two moons and more,” the young wife answered.
Then the old mother fell into a rage to think she was not told and she
cried, striking her staff against the earthen floor, “Why have you said
no word to me, who have sat all these years panting and pining and
thirsting for such news? Two moons--was ever so cold a soul as you and
would not any other woman have told the thing the first day that she
knew it!”
Then the young woman stayed her knife and she said in her careful way,
“I did not lest I might be wrong and grieve you worse than if I never
gave you hope.”
But this the mother would not grant and she spat and said, “Well and
with all the children I have had could not I have told you whether you
were right or wrong? No, you think I am a child and foolish with my
age. I know what you think--yes, you show it with every step you make.”
But the young woman answered nothing. She pressed her lips together,
those full pale lips, and poured a bowl of tea from an earthen pot that
stood there on the table and she led the mother to her usual place
against the wall.
But the mother could not sit and hold such news as this. No, she must
go and tell her cousin and her cousin’s wife and there they sat at
home, for nowadays the sons did the work, the three who stayed upon
the land, the others having gone elsewhere to earn their food, and the
cousin still did what he could and he was always busy at some small
task or other. But even he could not work as he once had, and as for
his wife, she slept peacefully all day long except when she woke to
heed some grandchild’s cry.
And now the mother went across the way and woke her ruthlessly and
shouted at her as she slept, “You shall not be the only grandmother, I
swear! A few months and I am to have a grandson too!”
The cousin’s wife came to herself then slowly, smiling and licking
her lips that were grown dry with sleeping, and she opened her little
placid eyes and said, “Is it so, cousin, and is your little son to be
wed?”
The mother’s heart sank a little, and she said, “No, not that,” and
then the cousin looked up from where he sat, a little weazened man
upon a low bamboo stool, and he sat there twisting ropes of straw for
silkworms to spin cocoons upon, since it was the season when they spin,
and he said in his spare dry way, “Your son’s wife, then, cousin?”
“Aye,” the mother said heartily, her pleasure back again, and she sat
down to pour it out, but she would not seem too pleased either, and
she hid her pleasure with complaints and said, “Time, too, and I have
waited these eight years and if I had been rich I would have fetched
another woman for him, but I thought my younger son should have his
chance before I gave his brother two, and marriage costs so much these
days even for a second woman, if she be decent and not from some evil
place. A very slow woman always that son’s wife of mine, and full of
some temper not like mine--cold as any serpent’s temper it is.”
“But not evil, goodwife,” said the cousin justly. “She has done well
and carefully always. You have the ducks and drakes now that you did
not used to have upon the pond, and she mated that old buffalo you had
and got this young one, and your fowls are twice as many as you had
and you must have ten or twelve by now, besides all the many ones sold
every year.”
“No, not evil,” said the mother grudgingly, “but I wish she could have
used heats other than the heats of beasts and fowls.”
Then the cousin’s wife spoke kindly but always full of sleep these
days, and she said, yawning as she spoke, “Aye, she is different from
you, cousin, to be sure--a full hot woman have you always been and one
to do so much, and still hearty. Why, when you walk about, if you have
not your flux, I do wonder how you walk so quick. I do marvel, for if
I must walk from bench to table and from table to bed, it is as much as
I can do these days.”
And the cousin said admiringly, “Aye, and I cannot eat half what I used
to do, but I see you sitting there and shouting for your bowl to be
filled again and then again.”
And the mother said modestly but pleased at all this praise, “Oh, aye,
I eat as well as ever. Three bowls and often four I eat, and I can eat
anything not too hard since my front teeth fell away, and I am very
sound at such times as I have not got my flux.”
“A very sound old soul,” murmured the cousin’s wife, and then she slept
a little and woke again and saw the mother there and smiled her wide
sleepy smile and said, “A grandson, did you say? Aye, we have seven now
of grandsons alone--and none too many--” and slept again peacefully.
* * * * *
So did the great news fill the days that had been empty because the
younger son did not come, and this new joy took the edge from the
mother’s waiting and she thought he must come some time or other and
let it rest at that.
But it was not all joy either, and like every joy she ever had, the
mother thought, there was always something wrong in it to make it go
amiss if so it could. Here the thing was. She feared lest the child be
born a girl and when she thought of this she muttered, “Yes, and it
would be like my ever evil destiny if it were born a girl.”
And in her anxiety she would have liked to go and ask that potent
little goddess that she knew and make a bribe to her of a new robe of
red or new shoes or some such thing if she would make the child a boy.
But she did not dare to go lest she recall to the goddess’ mind that
old sin of hers, and she feared the goddess lest her old sin was not
yet atoned for, even with the sorrow that she had, and that if the
goddess saw her and heard her speak of grandsons, she might remember
and reach out and smite the little one in the womb. She thought to
herself, most miserably, “Better if I do not go and show myself at all.
If I stay away and do not tell her that the child is coming, she may
forget me this long time I have not been to any gods, and it will be
but the birth of another mortal and not my grandson, and I must chance
it is a boy.”
And then she grew uneasy and full of gloom and thought to herself that
if the child were joy yet was it a new gate for sorrow to enter by,
too, and so is every child, and when she thought of this and how the
child might be born dead or shapen wrong or dull or blind or a girl or
any of these things, she hated gods and goddesses who have such powers
to mar a mortal, and she muttered, “Have I not been more than punished
for any little sin I did? Who could have thought the gods would know
what I did that day? But doubtless that old god in the shrine smelled
the sin about him and told the goddess somehow even though I covered up
his eyes. Well, I will stay away from gods, so sinful an old soul as I
be, for even if I would I do not know how to atone more for what I did
than I have atoned. I swear if they measured up the joy and sorrow I
have had in my whole life the sorrow would sink the scales like stone,
and the joy be nothing more than thistledown, such poor joys as I have
had. I did not bear the child and I have seen my blind maid die, still
blind. Does not sorrow atone? Aye, I have been very full of sorrows all
my life long, always poor too, with all my sorrows. But gods know no
justice.”
So, she thought gloomily, she had two sorrows to bear now: fear lest
her grandson be not whole and sound or else a girl, and waiting for
this younger son who would not come. Sometimes she thought her whole
life was only made of waiting now. So had she waited for her man to
come who never came, and now her son and grandsons. Such was her life
and poor stuff it was, she thought.
Yet she must hope and whenever anyone went into town she always asked
him when he came back again, “Saw you my little son today anywhere?”
And she would go about the hamlet and to this house and that and say,
“Who went to town today?” And when one said he had, she asked again,
“Saw you my little son today, goodman?”
All through the hamlet in those days of waiting the men and women grew
used to this question and when they looked up and saw her leaning on
the staff her son had cut for her from a branch of their own trees and
heard her old quavering voice ask, “Neighbor, saw you my little son
today?” they would answer kindly enough, “No, no, good mother, and how
could we see him in the common market-place where we go and he such as
he is, and one you say who lives by books?”
Then she would turn away dashed of her hope again and she let her voice
sink and mutter, “I do not know--well and I think it is he has to do
with books somewhere,” and they would laugh and say to humor her, “If
some day we pass a place where books are sold we will look in and see
if he is there behind the counter.”
So she must go home to wait and wonder if the moths had eaten up the
sheepskins.
* * * * *
But one day after many moons there came news. The mother sat by the
door as ever she did now, her long pipe in her fingers, for she had
only just eaten her morning meal. She sat and marked how sharply the
morning sun rose over the rounded hills and waited for it hoping for
its heat, for these autumn mornings were chill. Then came suddenly
across the threshold a son of her cousin’s, the eldest son, and he went
to her own elder son who stood binding the thong of his sandal that had
broken as he put it on, and he said something in a low voice.
She wondered even then for she had seen this man start for the town
that morning when she rose at dawn, since she could not lie abed
easily if she were well, being used to dawn rising all her life, and
she saw him start to town with loads of new-cut grass. Here he was back
so soon, and she was about to call out and ask him if he had sold his
grass so quick when she saw her elder son look up from the thong and
cry aghast, “My brother?”
Yes, the old mother’s sharp ears heard it, for she was not deaf at all
and she called out quickly, “What of my little son?”
But the two men talked on earnestly and very gravely and with anxious
looks into each other’s faces and at last the mother could not bear
it and she rose and hobbled to them and she struck her staff upon the
beaten earth and cried out, “Tell me of my son!”
But the cousin’s son went away without a word and the elder son said,
halting, “Mother, there is something wrong. I do not know--but, mother,
I must go to town and see and tell you then--”
But the mother would not let him go. She laid hold on him and cried out
the more, “You shall not go until you tell me!”
And at the sound of such a voice the son’s wife came and stood and
listened and said, “Tell her, else she will be ill with anger.”
So the son said slowly, “My cousin said--he said he saw my brother this
morning among many others, and his hands were tied behind him with
hempen ropes and his clothes were rags and he was marching past the
market-place where my cousin had taken the grass to sell, and there
was a long line of some twenty or thirty, and when my brother saw him
he turned his eyes away--but my cousin asked and the guards who walked
along said they were communists sent to gaol to be killed tomorrow.”
Then did the three stare at each other, and as they stared the old
mother’s jaw began to tremble and she looked from this face to the
other and said, “I have heard that word, but I do not know what it is.”
And the son said slowly, “So I asked my cousin and he asked the guard
and the guard laughed and he said it was a new sort of robber they had
nowadays.”
Then the mother thought of that bundle hid so long beneath her bed and
she began to wail aloud and threw her coat over her head and sobbed and
said, “I might have known that night--oh, that bundle underneath my bed
is what he robbed!”
But the son and son’s wife laid hold on her at this and looked about
and hurried her between them into the house and said, “What do you
mean, our mother?”
And the son’s wife lifted up the curtain and looked at the man and he
came and the old mother pointed to the bundle there and sobbed, “I do
not know what is in it--but he brought it here one night--and bade me
be secret for a day or two--and still he is not come--and never came--”
Then the man rose and went and shut the door softly and barred it and
the woman hung a garment over the window and together they drew that
bundle forth and untied the ropes.
“Sheepskins, he said it was,” the mother murmured, staring at it.
But the two said nothing and believed nothing that she said. It might
be anything and half they expected it was gold when they felt how heavy
and how hard it was.
But when they opened it, it was only books. Many, many books were
there, all small and blackly printed, and many sheets of paper, some
pictured with the strangest sights of blood and death and giants
beating little men or hewing them with knives. And when they saw these
books, the three gaped at each other, all at a loss to know what this
could mean and why any man should steal and hide mere paper marked with
ink.
But however much they stared they could not know the meaning. None
could read a word, nor scarcely know the meaning of the pictures except
that they were of bloody things, men stabbed and dying, and men severed
in pieces and all such bloody hateful things as happen only where
robbers are.
Then were the three in terror, the mother for her son and the other
two for themselves lest any should know that these were there. The man
said, “Tie them up again and let them be till night and then we will
take them to the kitchen and burn them all.”
But the woman was more careful and she said, “No, we cannot burn them
all at once or else others will see the mighty smoke and wonder what we
do. I must burn them bit by bit and day by day as though I burned the
grass to cook our food.”
But the old mother did not heed this. She only knew now that her son
had fallen in evil hands and she said to her elder son, “Oh, son, what
will you do for your little brother--how will you find him?”
“I know where he is,” the man said slowly and unwillingly. “My cousin
said they took them to a certain gaol near the south gate where the
beheading ground is.”
And then he cried out at his mother’s sudden ghastly look and he called
to his wife and they lifted the old woman and laid her on the bed and
there she lay and gasped, her face the hue of clay with terror for
her son, and she whispered gasping, “Oh, son, will you not go--your
brother--”
And the elder son laid aside his fears for himself then slowly and he
said, in pity for his mother, “Oh, aye, mother, I go--I go--”
He changed his clothes then and put shoes on his feet and to the mother
the time went so slow she could not bear it. When at last he was ready
she called him to her and pulled his head down and whispered in his
ear, “Son, do not spare money. If he be truly in the gaol, there must
be money spent to get him out. But money can do it, son. Whoever heard
of any gaol that would not let a man free for money? Son, I have a
little--in a hole here--I only kept it for him--use it all--use all we
have--”
The man’s face did not change and he looked at his wife and she looked
at him and he said, “I will spare all I can, my mother, for your sake.”
But she cried, “What does it matter for me?--I am old and ready to die.
It is for his sake.”
But the man was gone, and he went to fetch his cousin who had seen the
sight and the two went toward the town.
What could the mother do then except to wait again? Yet this was the
bitterest waiting of her life. She could not lie upon her bed and yet
she was faint if she rose. At last the son’s wife grew frightened
to see how the old woman looked and how she stared and muttered and
clapped her hands against her lean thighs and so she went and fetched
the old cousin and the cousin’s wife, and the pair came over soberly
and the three old people sat together.
It was true it did comfort the mother somewhat to have the others
there, for these were the two she could speak most to and she wept and
said again and again, “If I have sinned have I not had sorrow enough?”
And she said, “If I have sinned why do I not die myself and let it
be an end of it? Why should this one and that be taken from me, and
doubtless my grandson, too? No, I shall never see my grandson. I know
I never shall, and it will not be I who must die.” And then she grew
angry at such sorrow and cried out in her anger, weeping as she cried,
“But where is any perfect woman and who is without any sin, and why
should I have all the sorrow?”
Then the cousin’s wife said hastily, for she feared that this old
mother might cry out too much in her pain, “Be sure we all have sins
and if we must be judged by sins then none of us would have children.
Look at my sons and grandsons, and yet I am a wicked old soul, too, and
I never go near a temple and I never have and when a nun used to come
and cry out that I should learn the way to heaven, why then I was too
busy with the babes, and now when I am old and they come and tell me I
must learn the way before it is too late, why then I say I am too old
to learn anything now and must do without a heaven if they will not
have me as I am.”
So she comforted the distraught mother, and the cousin said in his
turn, “Wait, good cousin, until we hear what the news is. It may be you
need not grieve after all, for he may be set free with the money they
have to free him with, or it may be my son saw wrong and it was not
your son who went past bound.”
But the cousin’s wife took this care. She bade the young wife go and
see to something or other in her own house, for she would have this
son’s wife out of earshot, lest this poor old woman tell more than she
meant to tell in this hour, and a great pity after keeping silence so
many years.
So they waited for the two men to return and it was easier waiting
three than one.
But night drew on before the mother saw them coming. She had dragged
herself from her bed and as the afternoon wore on she went and sat
under the willow tree, her cousin and her cousin’s wife beside her, and
there the old three sat staring down the hamlet street, except when the
cousin’s wife slept her little sleeps that not even sorrow could keep
from her.
At last when the sun was nearly set the mother saw them coming. She
rose and leaned upon her staff and shaded her eyes against the golden
evening sun and she cried, “It is they!” and hobbled down the street.
So loud had been her cry, so fast her footsteps, that everyone came
out of his house, for in the hamlet they all knew the tale but did not
dare to come openly to the mother’s house, for fear there might be some
judgment come on it because of this younger son and they all be caught
in it. All day then they had gone about their business, eaten through
with curiosity, but fearful too, as country people are when gaols and
governors are talked of. Now they came forth and hung about, but at a
distance, and watched what might befall. The cousin rose too and went
behind the mother, and even the cousin’s wife would fain have come
except now she did not walk unless she must and she thought to herself
that she would hear it but a little later and she was one who believed
the best must happen after all and so she spared herself and sat upon
her bench and waited.
But the mother ran and laid hold on her son’s arm and cried out, “What
of my little son?”
But even as she asked the question, even as her old eyes searched the
faces of the two men, she knew that ill was written there. The two men
looked at each other and at last the son said soberly, “He is in gaol,
mother.” The two men looked at each other again and the cousin’s son
scratched his head for a while and looked away and seemed foolish and
as though he did not know what to say, and so the son spoke again,
“Mother, I doubt he can be saved. He and twenty more are set for death
and in the morning.”
“Death?” the mother shrieked, and again she shrieked, “Death!”
And she would have fallen if they had not caught her.
Then the two men led her in to the nearest house and put a seat beneath
her and eased her down and she began to weep and cry as a child does,
her old mouth quivering and her tears running down and she beat her
dried breasts with her clenched hands and cried out, accusing her son,
“Then you did not offer them enough money--I told you I had that little
store--not so little either, forty pieces of silver and the two little
pieces he gave me last--and there they are waiting!” And when she saw
her son stand with hanging head and the sweat bursting out on his lip
and brow she spat at him in her anger and she said, “You shall not
have a penny of it either! If he dies it will not be for you. No, I
will go and throw it in the river first.”
Then the cousin’s son spoke up in defense and for the sake of peace
and he said, his face wrinkling in such a distressful hour and cause,
“No, aunt, do not blame him. He offered more than twice your store. He
offered a hundred pieces for his brother, and to high and low in that
gaol, as high as he could get he offered bribes. To this one and to
that he showed silver, but they would not even let him see your little
son.”
“Then he did not offer enough,” the mother shouted. “Whoever heard of
guards in a gaol who are not to be bribed? But I will go and fetch that
money this moment. Yes, I will dig it up and take it, old as I am, and
find my little son and bring him home and he shall never leave me more,
whatever they may say.”
Again the two men looked at each other and the son’s face begged his
cousin to speak again for him and so the cousin’s son said again, “Good
aunt, they will not even let you see him. They would not let us in
at all, I say; no, although we showed silver, because they said the
governor was hot now against such crime as his. It is some new crime
nowadays, and very heinous.”
“My son has never done a crime,” the mother cried proudly, and she
lifted up her staff and shook it at the man. “There is an enemy
somewhere here who pays more than we have to keep him in the gaol.”
And she looked around about the crowd that stood there gaping now and
drinking down the news they heard, their eyes staring and their jaws
agape, and she cried at them, “Saw any of you any crime my little son
ever did?”
This one looked at that and each looked everywhere and said no word
and the mother saw their dubious looks and somehow her heart broke.
She fell into her weeping again and cried at them, “Oh, you hated him
because he was so fair to look upon--better than your black sons, who
are only hinds--aye, you hate anyone who is better than yourselves--”
and she rose and staggered forth and went home weeping most bitterly.
But when she was come home again and they were alone and none near
except the cousin and the cousin’s wife and their children, the mother
wiped her eyes and said to her elder son more quietly yet in a fever,
too, “But this is letting good time pass. Tell me all, for we may save
him yet. We have the night. What was his true crime? We will take all
we have and save him yet.”
There passed between the son and son’s wife a look at this, not evil,
but as though forbearance were very near its end in them, and then the
son began, “I do not know what the crime is rightly, but they call him
what I told you, a communist. A new word--I have heard it often, and
when I asked what it was it seemed to be a sort of robber band. I asked
the guard there at the gaol, who stands with a gun across his arm, and
he answered, ‘What is he? Why, one who would even take your land from
you, goodman, for himself, and one who contrives against the state and
so must die with all his fellows.’ Aye, that is his crime.”
The mother listened hard to this, the candle’s light falling on her
face that glistened with dried tears, and she said astounded, her voice
trembling while she strove to make it firm, “But I do not think it can
be so. I never heard him say a word like this. I never heard of such a
crime. To kill a man, to rob a house, to let a parent starve, these be
crimes. But how can land be robbed? Can he roll it up like cloth and
take it away with him and hide it somewhere?”
“I do not know, mother,” said the son, his head hanging, his hands
hanging loose between his knees as he sat upon a little stool. He wore
his one robe still, but he had tucked the edge into his girdle, for he
was not used to robes, and now he put it in more firmly and then he
said slowly, “I do not know what else was said, a great deal here and
there in the town we heard, because so many are to be killed tomorrow
and they make a holiday. What else was said, my cousin?”
Then the cousin’s son scratched his chin and swallowed hard and stared
at the faces round about him in the room and he said, “There was a
great deal said by those town folk, but I dared not ask much for when
I asked more closely what the pother was about the guards at the gaol
turned on me and said, ‘Are you one of them, too? What is it then to
you if they are killed?’ And I dared not say I was the cousin of one
to be killed. But we did find a chief gaoler and we gave him some money
and begged for a private place to speak in and he led us to a corner of
the gaol behind his own house and we told him we were honest country
folk and had a little poor land and rented more, and that there was one
among the doomed to die who was a distant relative, and if we could
save him then we would for honor’s sake, since none of our name had
died under a headsman’s blade before. But only if it did not cost too
much since we were poor. The gaoler took the silver then and asked how
the lad looked and we told him and he said, ‘I think I know the lad you
mean, for he has been very ill at ease in gaol, and I think he would
say all he knows, except there is a maid beside him bold as any I have
ever seen who keeps him brave. Yes, some are hard and bold and do not
care however they may die or when they die. But that lad is afraid. I
doubt he knows what he has done or why he dies, for he looks a simple
country lad they have used for their bidding and made great promises to
him. I believe his crime is that he was found with certain books upon
him that he gave among the people freely, and in the books are evil
things said of overturning all the state and sharing all the money and
the land alike.’”
Then the mother looked at her elder son and broke out in fresh weeping
and she moaned, “I knew we ought to let him have some land. We might
have rented a little more and given him a share--but no, this elder
son of mine and his wife must hold it all and grudge him everything--”
Then the elder son opened his mouth to speak, but the old cousin said
quietly, “Do not speak, my son. Let your mother blame you and ease
herself. We all know what you are and what your brother was and how ill
he hated any labor on the land or any labor anywhere.”
So the son held his peace. At last the cousin’s son said on, “We asked
the gaoler then how much silver it would take to set the lad free, and
the gaoler shook his head and said that if the lad were high of place
and son of some great rich and mighty man then doubtless silver used
could set him free. But being a country lad and poor no man would put
his life in danger for all that we could give, and so doubtless he must
die.”
At this the mother shrieked, “And shall he die because he is my son and
I am poor? We have that land we own and we will sell it to free him.
Yes, we will sell it this very night,--there are those in this hamlet--”
But the elder son spoke up at this talk of his land and he said, “And
how then will we live? We can scarcely live even as it is and if we
rent more and at these new and ruinous rates we have now we shall be
beggars. All we own is this small parcel of land and I will not sell
it, mother. No, the land is mine--I will not sell it.”
And when he said this his wife spoke up, to say the only thing she had
said all the time, for she had sat there quietly listening, her pale
face grave and showing nothing and she said, “There is the son I have
in me to think of now.”
And the man said heavily, “Aye, it is he I think of.”
Then was the old mother silent. Yes, she was silent and she wept a
while and thereafter all that night whenever fresh words broke forth
there was but this one answer to them all.
* * * * *
When the dim dawn came near, for they had sat the night through, the
mother gathered some strange strength she had and said, “I will go
myself. Once more I will go into the town and wait to see my little son
if he must go out to die.” And they laid their hands upon her arm and
begged her not to go, and the son said earnestly, “Mother, I will go
and fetch him--afterwards--for if you see the sight you yourself will
die.” But she said, “What if I die?”
She washed her face and combed the bit of gray hair left on her head
and put a clean coat on herself as ever she was used to do when she
went townwards, and she said simply, “Go and fetch my cousin’s ass. You
will let me have it, cousin?”
“Oh, aye,” the cousin said helplessly and sadly.
So the son and cousin’s son went and fetched the ass and set the old
mother on its back and they walked to the town beside it, a lantern in
the son’s hand, for dawn was still too faint to walk by.
Now was the mother weak and quiet and washed by her tears, and she went
almost not knowing what she did, but clinging to the ass’s back. Her
head hung down and she did not look once to see the dawn. She stared
down into the pale dusty road that scarcely showed yet through the
darkness. The men were silent, too, at that grave hour, and so they
went winding with the road to the south and entered in toward the
southern gate that was not opened yet as they came because the day was
still so early.
But there were many waiting there, for it had been noised about the
countryside that there would be this great beheading and many came to
see it for a show and brought their children. As soon as the gates were
opened they all pressed in, the mother on her ass, and the two men,
and they all turned to that piece of ground near the city wall within
a certain open space. There in the early morning light a great crowd
stood already, thick and pressed and silent with the thought of this
vast spectacle of death. Little children clung hard to their parents in
nameless fear of what they did not know, and babes cried out and were
hushed and the crowd was silent, waiting hungrily, relishing in some
strange way and hating, too, the horror that they craved to see.
But the mother and the two men did not stay in the crowd. No, the
mother whispered, “Let us go to the door of the gaol and stand there,”
for in her poor heart she still held the hope that somehow when she saw
her son some miracle must happen, some way must come whereby she could
save him.
So the man turned the ass’s head toward the gaol and there it was,
and beside its gate set in the high wall spiked with glass along the
top they waited. There a guard stretched himself and by him a lantern
burned low, the candle spilling out a heap of melted tallow red as
blood, until a chill wind blew up suddenly with the dawn and blew the
guttering light out. There the three waited in the dusty street, and
the mother came down from the ass and waited, and soon they heard the
sound of footsteps stirring, and then the sound of many footsteps made
on stone and marching and then there was a shout, “Open the gates!”
The guards sprang up then and stood beside the gates erect, their
weapons stiff and hard across their shoulders, and so the gates swung
open.
Then did the mother strain her eyes to see her son. There came forth
many persons, youth tied to youth and two by two, their hands bound
with hempen thongs, and each two tied to the two ahead. At first they
seemed all young men, and yet here and there were maids, but hard to
tell as maids, because their long hair was shorn and they wore the
garments that the men did, and there was nothing to show what they were
until one looked close and saw their little breasts and narrow waists,
for their faces were as wild and bold as any young man’s.
The mother looked at every face, at this one and at that, and suddenly
she saw her own lad. Yes, there he walked, his head down, and he was
tied to a maid, and his hands fast to hers.
Then the mother rushed forward and fell at his feet and clasped them
and gave one loud cry, “My son!”
She looked up into his face, the palest face, his lips white and
earthen and the eyes dull. When he saw his mother he turned paler still
and would have fallen had he not been bound to the maid. For this maid
pulled at him and would not let him fall, nor would she let him stay,
and when she saw the old white-haired woman at his feet she laughed
aloud, the boldest, mirthless laugh and she cried out high and shrill,
“Comrade, remember now you have no mother and no father, nor any dear
to you except our common cause!” And she pulled him on his way.
Then a guard ran out and picked the mother up and threw her to one side
upon the road and there she lay in the dust. Then the crowd marched on
and out of sight and to that southern gate, and suddenly a wild song
burst from them and they went singing to their death.
At last the two men came and would have lifted up the mother, but she
would not let them. She lay there in the dust a while, moaning and
listening in a daze to that strange song, yet knowing nothing, only
moaning on.
And yet she could not moan long either, for a guard came from the gaol
gate and prodded her most rudely with his gun and roared at her, “Off
with you, old hag--” and the two men grew afraid and forced the mother
to her feet and set her on the ass again and turned homeward slowly.
But before they reached the southern gate they paused a while beside a
wall and waited.
They waited until they heard a great roar go up, and then the two men
looked at each other and at the old mother. But if she heard it or
knew what it was, she made no sign. She sat drooping on the beast, and
staring into the dust beneath its feet.
Then they went on, having heard the cry, and they met the crowd
scattering and shouting this and that. The men said nothing nor did the
old mother seem to hear, but some cried out, “A very merry death they
died, too, and full of courage! Did you see that young bold maid and
how she was singing to the end and when her head rolled off I swear she
sang on a second, did she not?”
And some said, “Saw you that lad whose red blood spurted out so far it
poured upon the headsman’s foot and made him curse?”
And some were laughing and their faces red and some were pale, and as
the two men and the mother passed into the city gate, there was a young
man there whose face was white as clay and he turned aside and leaned
against the wall and vomited.
But if she saw or heard these things the mother said no word. No, she
knew the lad was dead now; dead, and no use silver or anything; no use
reproach, even if she could reprove. She longed but for one place and
it was to get to her home and search out that old grave and weep there.
It came across her heart most bitterly that not even had she any grave
of her own dead to weep upon as other women had, and she must go and
weep on some old unknown grave to ease her heart. But even this pang
passed and she only longed to weep and ease herself.
* * * * *
When she was before their door again she came down from the ass and she
said pleading to her elder son, “Take me out behind the hamlet--I must
weep a while.”
The cousin’s wife was there and heard it and she said kindly, shaking
her old head and wiping her eyes on her sleeves, “Aye, let the poor
soul weep a while--it is the kindest thing--”
And so in silence the son led his mother to the grave and made a smooth
place in the grass for her to sit upon and pulled some other grass and
made it soft for her. She sat down then and leaned her head upon the
grave and looked at him haggardly and said, “Go away and leave me for
a while and let me weep.” And when he hesitated she said again most
passionately, “Leave me, for if I do not weep then I must die!”
So he went away saying, “I will come soon to fetch you, mother,” for he
was loath to leave her there alone.
Then did the mother sit and watch the idle day grow bright. She watched
the sun come fresh and golden over all the land as though no one had
died that day. The fields were ripe with late harvest and the grain
was full and yellow in the leaf and the yellow sun poured over all
the fields. And all the time the mother sat and waited for her sorrow
to rise to tears in her and ease her broken heart. She thought of all
her life and all her dead and how little there had been of any good to
lay hold on in her years, and so her sorrow rose. She let it rise, not
angry any more, nor struggling, but letting sorrow come now as it would
and she took her measure full of it. She let herself be crushed to the
very earth and felt her sorrow fill her, accepting it. And turning her
face to the sky she cried in agony, “Is this atonement now? Am I not
punished well?”
And then her tears came gushing and she laid her old head upon the
grave and bent her face into the weeds and so she wept.
On and on she wept through that bright morning. She remembered every
little sorrow and every great one and how her man had quarreled and
gone and how there was no little maid to come and call her home from
weeping now and how her lad looked tied to that wild maid and so she
wept for all her life that day.
* * * * *
But even as she wept her son came running. Yes, he came running over
the sun-strewn land and as he ran he beckoned with his arm and shouted
something to her but she could not hear it quickly out of all her maze
of sorrow. She lifted up her face to hear and then she heard him say,
“Mother--mother--” and then she heard him cry, “My son is come--your
grandson, mother!”
Yes, she heard that cry of his as clear as any call she ever heard her
whole life long. Her tears ceased without her knowing it. She rose and
staggered and then went to meet him, crying, “When--when--”
“But now,” he shouted laughing. “This very moment born--a son--I never
saw a bigger babe and roaring like a lad born a year or two, I swear!”
She laid her hand upon his arm and began to laugh a little, half
weeping, too. And leaning on him she hurried her old feet and forgot
herself.
Thus the two went to the house and into that room where the new mother
lay upon her bed. The room was full of women from the hamlet who had
come to hear the news and even that old gossip, the oldest woman of
them all now, and very deaf and bent nigh double with her years, she
must come too and when she saw the old mother she cackled out, “A lucky
woman you are, goodwife--I thought the end of your luck was come, but
here it is born again, son’s son, I swear, and here be I with nothing
but my old carcass for my pains--”
But the old mother said not one word and she saw no one. She went into
the room and to the bed and looked down. There the child lay, a boy,
and roaring as his father said he did, his mouth wide open, as fair
and stout a babe as any she had ever seen. She bent and seized him in
her arms and held him and felt him hot and strong against her with new
life.
She looked at him from head to foot and laughed and looked again, and
at last she searched about the room for the cousin’s wife and there the
woman was, a little grandchild or two clinging to her, who had come to
see the sight. Then when she found the face she sought the old mother
held the child for the other one to see and forgetting all the roomful
she cried aloud, laughing as she cried, her eyes all swelled with her
past weeping, “See, cousin! I doubt I was so full of sin as once I
thought I was, cousin--you see my grandson!”
THE
JOHN DAY
COMPANY
INC.
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