Part 11

So the mother rose at last and sighed most heavily, not knowing what her prayer was worth, and she lit her incense and went away again. When she had walked the ten miles and come to her own door once more, cold and weary, she sank upon the stool and she said sadly when the children asked her how the goddess heard her prayer, “How do I know what heaven wills? I could but say my prayer and it must be as heaven wills and we can only wait and see how it will be.”

But with all her secret heart she wished she had not sinned her sin. The more she wished the more she wondered how she could have done it, and all her gorge rose against that smooth-faced man and she loathed him for her sin’s sake and because she could not now in any way undo what had been done. At that hour of deep loathing she was healed of all her heat and youth, and she was young no more. For her there was no man left in the world for man’s own sake, and there were only these three her children, and one blind.

XIII

Now the mother was no longer young. She was in her forty and third year, and when she counted on her fingers sometimes in the night how many years her children’s father had been gone, she used the fingers of her two hands and two more over again, and even the years that she had let the hamlet think him dead were more than all the fingers on one hand.

Yet she walked straight and slight as ever, and no flesh grew on her frame. Others might begin to shrivel or grow fat as the cousin’s wife did each year, and the old gossip, too, yet this woman stayed lean and strong as she had been when she was young. But her breasts grew small and dry, and in the strong sunlight where one saw her face full, there were lines about the eyes from working in the bright hard sunshine, and the skin was dark with the burning of the many years in the fields. She moved somewhat more slowly than she did, too, without the old lightness, for she had never been as she was before she tore that wild life out of her. When she was called for childbirth in the hamlet as she often was now, seeing she was widowed and counted as among the ones not young, she found it hard to move so quickly as she must sometimes, and once or twice a young mother caught the child herself, and once she even let a newborn babe fall to the brick floor and bruise its head, and it was a boy, too, but still no harm was done in the end most luckily, for the lad grew up sturdy and with all his senses in him.

As her children grew, to them their mother seemed old. The eldest was forever urging her to rest herself and not to heave so at the hard great clods when the land was ploughed but let him do it, for he did it easily now in the strength of his young manhood, and he strove to have her do the lesser lighter things, and nothing pleased him better than to see her sit quietly upon her stool in the shade on a summer’s day sewing, and let him go to the land alone.

Yet the truth was she was not after all as old as her son would have her. She ever loved the field work better than any and she loved to work there on the land and then come home, her body wet with her clean sweat and the wind blowing cool on that wetness, and her flesh weary but sweetly so. Her eyes were used to fields and hills and great things, and they did not narrow easily to small fine things like needles.

Indeed, in that house they sorely missed a woman young and with sound eyes, for they all knew now the girl’s eyes were blind. She knew, too, poor maid; ever since that day when she had gone to town with her mother she knew it secretly, even as her mother did, and neither had any great faith in the goddess, somehow, the mother from what she feared of that old sin of hers, and the maid because her blindness seemed to her a destiny.

One day the mother cried, “Have you used that stuff all gone from the goose quill?” and the girl answered quietly from the doorstep where she sat, for there was this one good she had, the light hurt her no more because she could not see it, and she said, “I have used it to the end long since.”

And the mother said again, “I must buy you more--why did you not say it sooner?”

But the young girl shook her head, and the mother’s heart stopped to see her look, and then these words came wildly from those gentle lips, “Oh, mother, I am blind--well I know I am blind! I cannot see your face at all now, and if I went out from our own dooryard across the threshing-floor, I could not see the way to go. Do you not see I never go away from the house now, not even to the field?” And she fell to weeping, wincing and biting her lips, for it was still painful to her to weep, and she would not unless she could not help herself.

The mother answered nothing. What was there to answer to her blind child?... But after a while she rose and went into the room and from the drawer where once the trinkets lay she fetched out the little gong she bought and she said to the girl, going to her, “Child, I bought this thing against the day--” She could not finish but she pressed the thing into the girl’s hand and the girl took it, feeling quickly what it was, and she held it fast and said in her plaintive way, quiet again, “Yes, I need it, mother.”

When the elder son came home that evening his mother bade him cut a staff from some hard tree and smooth it to his sister’s hand, so that with her little sounding signal in one hand and in the other the staff she might move about more freely and with something less of fear, as the blind do, and so if any harm came to her, or one pushed against her carelessly or knocked her so she fell, the mother would not be blamed because she had set the sign of blindness plain upon the maid for all to see.

Thereafter the young girl carried with her when she went outside the door at all these two things, her staff and her small gong, and she learned to tinkle the gong softly and clearly and she moved in a quiet sure way, a pretty maid enough, her face small and plaintive and on it that still look that blindness sets upon a face.

Yet this blind maid was wonderfully clever, too, in her own way about the house. There she needed no sign or staff, and she could wash the rice and cook it, save that her mother would not let her light the fire any more, but she could sweep the room and the threshing-floor, and she could draw water from the pool, and search for eggs if the fowls laid them in some usual place, and she knew by scent and sound where the beasts were and how to set their food before them, and almost everything she could do, except to sew and work in the fields, and for labor in the fields she was not strong enough, for her suffering from babyhood had seemed to stunt her and hold back her growth.

Seeing the young girl move thus about the house the mother’s heart would melt within her and she suffered for what fate might befall this young thing when she must wed her somewhere. For wed she must be somehow, lest after the mother died there be not one to care for the maid nor one to whom she truly could belong, since a woman belongs first to the husband’s house and not to that house where she was born. Often and often the mother thought of this and she wondered who would have a maid who was blind, and if none would have her then what would happen to her in the end. If ever she spoke this matter out the elder lad would answer, “I will care for her, mother, as long as she will do her share,” and this would comfort the mother somewhat and yet she knew a man cannot be fully known until it is seen what his wife is, and she would think to herself, “I must find him such a wife as will take good heed of my blind maid and be kind to her. When I go looking for his wife I must find one who will take heed of two, her husband and his sister.”

* * * * *

It was time, too, the mother found a wife for this elder son of hers. Nineteen years old he had got to be and almost without her knowing it. Yet he had never asked her for a wife nor shown her his need of one. Ever he had been the best and mildest son a mother could have, working hard and never asking anything and if he went to the teashop sometimes or rarely on a holiday in town, although that he never did unless he had some business to put with it, he never took share in any ribaldry, nor even in a game of chance except to watch it from afar, and he was always silent where his elders were.

A very perfect son he was and with but one fault left now that he had passed the little faults of childhood and it was that he would not spare his younger brother. No, it was the strangest thing, but this elder son of hers, who was so even and gentle with all the world and even with the beasts, so silent he would scarcely say what color he would have the next new coat his mother bought him, when he was brother he was hard upon the younger lad and railed against the boy if he grew slack and played, and he held the boy bitterly to every sort of labor on the land. The house was full of quarreling, the younger lad noisy and full of angry words, and the elder brother holding himself silent until he could bear no more and then he fell upon his brother with whatever he had by him or with his bare hands and he beat the boy until he ran blubbering and dodging in and out among the trees and seeking refuge in his cousin’s house. And truly it came to such a pass as this, that the whole hamlet blamed the elder brother for his hardness and ran to save the younger lad, and so encouraged, the lad grew bold and ran away from work and lived mostly at his cousin’s house, lost there among the many lads and maids who grew there as they would, and he came home freely only when he saw his brother gone to work.

But sometimes the elder brother grew so bitter in his heart he came home out of time and found his younger brother and then he caught the lad’s head beneath his arm and cuffed him until the mother would come running and she cried, “Now let be--let be--shame on you, son, to strike your little brother so, and frighten your sister!”

But the young man answered bitterly, “Shall I not chastise him, being older brother to him and his father gone? He is an idle lazy lout, gaming already every time he can, and well you know it, mother, but you have ever loved him best!”

It was true the mother did love this youngest son the best, and he moved her heart as neither of the others did. The eldest son grew man so soon, it seemed to her, and silent and with naught to say to anyone, and she did not know this was because he was so often weary and that she thought him surly when he was only very weary. As for the girl, the mother loved her well but always with pain, for there the blind eyes were always for a reproach and she never could forget that the goddess had not heard her prayer nor had the mother ever heart to pray again, fearing now that it was her own sin come down in some way worse than she could bear because it fell upon her child. So it was that while her heart was ever soft with pity still the maid was never any joy to her. Even when the maid came loving and near and smiling and sat to listen to her mother’s voice, the mother rose with some excuse and busied herself somehow, because she could not bear to see those closed and empty eyes.

Only this youngest son was sound and whole and merry and oftentimes he seemed his father over again, and more and more the mother loved him, and all the love she ever had for the man now turned itself upon this son. She loved him and often stood between him and the elder brother so that when the young man seized the boy she rushed between them and caught the blows and forced her son to cease for shame because he might strike his mother, and then the lad would slip away.

It came to be that after a while the lad slipped often thus away and from his hiding in his cousin’s house he went to wandering here and there and even to the town and he would be gone perhaps a day or two, and then he would run back to his cousin’s house and come out as if he had been there all the time, his eyes upon his elder brother’s mood that day. And if he did not come, the mother would wait until the elder son was gone and she went to the cousin’s house and coaxed him home with some dainty she had made. But she half feared her elder son too these days and sometimes she would start with him to the field or leave soon and come and give the lad his meal first before his brother came, and he picked the best from every dish and she let him, for she loved him so well. She loved him for his merry words and ways and for his smooth round face and for the same supple, lissome body that his father had. The elder lad went bent already with his labor, his hand hard and slow, but this lad was quick and brown and smooth-skinned everywhere and light upon his feet as a young male cat, and the mother loved him.

And the slow elder son felt this warm love his mother had for his brother, and he brooded on it. Every day of labor he had done, and all the labor that he spared her he remembered now and it seemed to him his mother was the crudest soul that ever lived and she never recked it anything that he had striven from childhood for her sake. So the bitterness gathered slow and deep within his heart, and he hated his brother.

XIV

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,