Part 12

“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.

XV

Every day the mother watched to see if what the girl had said was true, and it was true. The young wife was not rude, and her words came from her smoothly and with seeming careful courtesy always. But she put upon the maid a hundred little pricks. She gave the blind maid less than her full bowl of food, or so it seemed in the mother’s eyes, and if there were some dainty on the table she did not give her any, and the blind maid, not seeing, did not know it was there. And indeed they would all have let it pass, not heeding in their own hunger, had not the mother’s eyes been sharpened, and she cried out, “Daughter, do you not like this dish of pig’s lungs we have cooked in soup today?”

And when the maid answered gently in surprise, “I did not know we had it, mother, and I like it very well,” then the mother would reach over and with her own spoon dip the meat and soup into the maid’s bowl, and be sure the son’s wife saw the mother do it, and she answered smoothly and courteously, scarcely moving her pale lips that with all their paleness were too thick, too, and she said, “I beg your pardon, sister--I did not see you had none.” But the mother knew she lied.

And sometimes when the son’s wife sewed shoes for the maid, and it was her duty to make shoes for them all, she put no time on the maid’s shoes beyond what she must, and she made the soles thin and spared herself the labor of a flower upon the front, and when the mother saw it she cried, “What--shall my maid not have a little flower such as you have on all your shoes?”

Then the son’s wife opened her little, dark, unshining eyes and said, “I will make them if you say, mother, only I thought since she was blind and could not see a color anyhow--and I have so many to make shoes for, and the younger lad wearing out a pair each month or two with all his running into town to play--”

As for the blind maid who sat there on the threshold in the sun, when she heard this and heard the complaint her sister made against the younger brother, she cried out in mild haste, “Mother, indeed I do not care for the flower, and my sister is right. What are flowers to the blind?”

So it seemed no quarrel and all the many small things seemed no quarrel. Yet one day the eldest son came to his mother, when she went around the house alone to pour some waste into the pig’s hole, and he said, “Mother, I have a thing to say to you, and it is not that I would urge my sister out of the house or grudge her anything. But a man must think of his own, and she is young, mother, and all her life is ahead of her, and shall I feed her all her life? I have not heard it so in any other house, that a man must feed his sister, unless it were some rich house where food is never missed. A man’s duty it is to feed his parents, his wife and his children. But there she is, young and like to live as long as I do, and it will be an ill thing for her, too, if she is not wed. Better for all women to be wed.”

Then the mother looked at her son, her face set in anger against him, and she said, accusing him, “That wife of yours has put this thought into you, my son. You lie there with her alone in that room and there you talk, the two of you, and she poisons you against your own blood with all she says to you in the night. And you--you are like all men--soft as mud in a ditch when you lie in bed with a woman.”

She turned away most bitterly, and she poured the stuff out for the pig and stood and watched it put its snout in and gobble, but she did not really see it, although commonly it was a thing to give her pleasure to see a beast feed heartily. No, she said on in sadness, “And what sort of man will have your sister? Who can we hope will have her save some man too poor for kindness, or a man whose wife is gone and he left and too poor to wed a sound woman again?”

Then the son said hastily, “I think of her, too. I do think of her and I think it is better for her to have a man of her own, even though she cannot have so good a one as though she were whole.”

“This is your wife who speaks, my son,” the mother said more sadly still.

But the man made answer in his stubborn way, “We are of one heart on this,” and when his mother said, “On everything, I fear,” he said no more but went to his fields, silent but unchanged.

Nevertheless the mother wilfully would not for long do anything to wed the maid. She told herself and told the maid and told her younger son and her cousin’s wife and any who would listen to her that she was not so old yet she could not have her own way and not so old she had no place in the house and not so old she could be bid like any child to do this or that or what she did not wish to do. She set herself against her son and son’s wife in this and herself she guarded the maid well and saw that nothing was done amiss to her nor that she was deprived of anything the others had.

But as the son’s wife grew more accustomed she grew more plain in speech and more complaining and courtesy dropped from her. She often said now where others heard her or when the women sat together about some door in the sun and sewed in company or had some gathering such as women love, then she said, “What I shall do when children come I do not know, seeing how I have to sew for all these in the house now. My mother grows old and I know it is my duty to do for her and be her eyes and hands and feet and all she needs. I have been taught so, and so I do and I hope I am always careful of my duty. But here this hungry second lad is and he does nothing, and here worse than he, for some day he must wed and his wife will work to feed and clothe him, here is this blind maid not wed and I do wonder if she is to be my care her whole life long, for her mother will not wed her.”

Such words as these she said and others like them and those who heard stared at the blind maid if she were by so that she even felt their gaze and hung her head ashamed to live as such a burden. And sometimes this one spoke or that one and said, “Well and there are many blind and some families teach their blind to tell fortunes or some such thing and earn a penny now and then. Yes, the blind often have an inward seeing eye and they can see things we cannot and their blindness is even a power to them so that other people fear them for it. This maid might be taught to soothsay or some such thing.”

And others said, “But there are poor houses, too, where they have a son and no money to wed him with and they will take a fool or a blind maid or one halt or dumb and count her better than none if they can get her for nothing for their son.”

Then the son’s wife said discontentedly, “I wish I knew some such one, and if you hear of any, neighbors, I would take it for a kindness if you would tell me so.” And being kind they promised the young wife, and they agreed that truly it was hard when money was so scarce and times so poor that she must feed this extra mouth that properly belonged elsewhere.

One day the gossip who was a widow came to the mother and she said, “Goodwife, if you would like to wed that blind maid of yours, I know a family in the hills to the north and they have a son seventeen or so now. They came in famine times from a northern province and they settled on some wild public land not in our village at the mountain’s foot, but up a little higher, and after a while a brother came, and there they live. The land is poor and they are poor, but so be you poor, too, goodwife, and your maid blind, and if you will only pay my going I will go and see to it for you. The truth is I have been minded for this long time to go home and see my own father’s house, but I am loath to ask my husband’s brother for the bit to do it with. A very hard thing is it to be widow in another’s house.”

At first the mother would not listen and she said loudly, “I can tend my own blind maid, goodwife!”

This afterwards she told her cousin’s wife and the cousin too, but the cousin looked grave a while and he said at last, “So could you tend her if you lived forever, sister, but when you are dead, and we dead too, perhaps, or very old and not masters any more before our children save in name, then who will tend her? And what if bad years come and parents must think first of their own children, and you gone?”

Then the mother was silent.

But soon she saw the truth that she could not live forever, at any time her life might end, the sooner, too, perhaps, because she had never had her own old vigor since that secret night.

In the summer of that year a flux came out of the air and laid its hold upon her. Ever she had loved to eat and eat heartily and all she wanted of what there was. But that summer came more than usually hot and there was a mighty pest of flies, so many everywhere that the winds blew them in the food and flies were mingled whether one would have it so or not, and the mother cried out at last to let them be, for there was no use in killing them and it was but a waste of time so many more came after. It was a summer, too, of great watermelons that when they were split showed darkly red or clear and yellow as their sort was, and never had there been a better year for melons than was that.