The Mother: A Novel (24 page)

It came to be that whenever any little dainty fell to her or if she went into a house in the hamlet for a visit with a neighbor, since she was so idle now in her age and nothing she must do, and if someone gave her a peach or a dried persimmon or a little cake or some such thing for kindness, she saved it for her younger son. Much time she spent in watching these small bits to see they did not mold, and she kept them as long as she could, and when he put off coming home and she was forced to eat them lest they spoil she felt it no pleasure and scarcely could she enjoy the dainty, although she loved food, too. Often would she open the drawer she kept them in and turn the little store over with her fingers and think to herself, “He does not come. He is not here. If I had a little grandson I could give them to him when my son does not come. I have no one, if my son does not come.”

And many hours of each day she sat and looked down the road to catch a glimpse of him as he came and when she saw the glint of a man’s robe she would run forward as best she could and when she saw it was her son come home she took his warm smooth hand in her old dry one and she pulled him into her own room and poured out for him the tea the careful son’s wife kept there for her and then with pleasure would she bring out the little store she had for him. And she sat down and watched him lovingly while he picked about among the bits and chose the best. Sometimes he turned his dainty nose aside and said, “That cake is mildewed, mother,” or he said, “I never liked a rice flour cake so dry.”

Then she would answer sorrowfully, “Is it too dry, my son? Well, and I thought you would still like it maybe,” and when he would not have it she ate it up herself to keep from wasting it, grieving that it was not good enough for him.

Then when he had eaten what he wished she sat to hear what he would say. Never would he answer all her questions freely as she wished he would and when she pressed him closely he seemed to be in haste to go away, and when she saw this was so, she learned to ask him nothing and he learned, too, to put her off. For as she grew older she forgot more easily and was put off more easily too, and to put her off he would tell her of some wonder he had seen, a juggler who would let a snake crawl down his throat and pull it up again by the tail, or a woman who had borne a two-headed child that she showed for a penny to those who wished to see it, or some such strange sight as may be seen in any town.

And the old mother was diverted by his talk and cried when he was gone, and she could not keep from telling of these wonders to the son and his wife. Once when she did so the elder son was bent over an earthen bowl of water, washing off his face after labor in the fields, and he looked up, his face wet, and said most bitterly, “Aye, he does not feed you nor do aught else for you but throw a bit of a coin to you as to a beggar. He comes here and eats and never puts his hand to hoe or plough and tells these tales and he is more to you than—” and he bent his face again and made a noise about his washing and would not listen to what his mother had to say in answer.

But this was all she knew of her younger son. She knew his lithe and pretty body, and she knew the pale gold of his skin, the hue a city man is and different from the dark and ruddy brown of country folk, and she knew how the nails grew long upon his two little fingers, and she knew his teeth were white and his black hair oiled and shining, and she knew how he let his hair grow long about his ears and how he tossed his head to keep his eyes clear of the glossy hair.

Yes, and she knew and loved his ready smile and his bold eyes and she loved his carelessness with silver and how he would reach into his girdle and give her what he had or if he had none ask of her what she had, and more than to have him give to her she loved to take what she had and press it on him. All he gave her she saved to give it back again when he might want it. It was the best use she knew for her small store.

B
UT 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.”