One month passed and she was afraid. Two months passed and three and harvest came, the grain was threshed, and what had been fear beneath her labor day by day was now a certainty. There was no more to doubt and she knew the worst had befallen her, mother of sons, goodwife honored in her hamlet, and she cursed the day of the storm and her own foolish heats. Well she might have known that with her own body all hot and open and waiting as it had been, her mind all eaten up with one hunger, well she might have known it was such a moment as must bear fruit. And the man’s body, too, so strong and good and full of its own power—how had she ever dreamed it could be otherwise?
Here was strange motherhood now that must be so secret and watched with such dismay in the loneliness of the night while the children slept. And however she might be sickened she dared not show it. Strange it was that when she bore her proper children she was not sick at all, but now her food turned on her when she ate a mouthful. It was as though this seed in her was so strong and lusty that it grew like a foul weed in her, doing what it would with her body ruthlessly, and she could not let a sign of it be seen.
Night after night she sat up in her bed, too ill at ease to lie down, and she groaned within herself, “I wish I were alone again and had not this thing here in me—I wish I were alone again as I was, and I would be content—” and it came to her often and wildly that she would hang herself there upon the bedpost. But yet she could not. There were her own good children, and she looked upon their sleeping faces and she could not, and she could not bear to think of the neighbors’ looks on her dead body when they searched her for her cause of death. There was nothing then save that she must live on.
Yet in spite of all this pain the woman was not healed of her desire toward that townsman, though she often hated while she longed for him. Rather did it seem he held her fast now by this secret hold that grew within her. She had repented that she ever yielded to him and yet she yearned for him often day and night. In the midst of her true shame and all her wishing she had withstood him, she yearned for him still. Yet she was ashamed to seek him out, and fearful too lest she be seen, and she could only wait again until he came, because it seemed to her if she went and sought him then she was lost indeed, and after that stuff for any man to use.
But here was a strange thing. The man was finished with her. He came no more throughout that whole summer until the grain was reaped when he must come, and he came hard and quarrelsome as he used to be and he took his full measure of his grain so that the lad cried wondering, “How have we made him angry, mother, who was so kind to us last year?”
And the woman answered sullenly, “How can I know?” But she knew. When he would not look at her, she knew.
Not even on the day of harvest feasting would he look at her, although she washed herself freshly and combed her hair and smoothed it down with oil and put on a clean coat and trousers and her one pair of stockings and the shoes she had made for the old woman’s burial day. So garbed and her cheeks red with sick hope and shyness and her eyes bright with all her desperate secret fears, she hurried here and there busying herself before his eyes about the feast, and she spoke to this one and to that, forcing herself to be loud and merry. The women stared astonished at her flaming cheeks and glittering eyes and at her loud voice and laughter, she who used to be so quiet where men were.
But for all this the man did not look at her. He drank of the new wine made of rice and as he tasted it he cried loudly to the farmers, “I will have a jug or two of that for myself, if you can spare it, farmers, and set the clay seal on well and sound to keep it sweet.” But he never looked at her, or if she came before him his eyes passed over her as they might over any common country wife whose name he did not know.
Then the woman could not bear it. Yes, although she knew she should be glad he did not want her any more, she could not bear it. She went home in the middle of that day of feasting and she searched from out their secret place those trinkets he had given her once and she was trembling while she searched. She hung the rings in her ears, taking out the little wires she had worn there all these years to keep the holes open, and she pushed the rings over her hard strong fingers, and once more she made a chance to see him, standing on the edge of the feast where women stood to serve the men who ate. There the gossip sat among them, gay for the day in her new shoes, and her feet thrust out to show them off, and she cried out, “Well, goodwife, there you are and you did buy your trinkets after all and wear them too, although your man is still away!”
She cried so
