At last the mother did not know what to do, except that something she must do and quickly, for even if the letter was not written at new year time, the lad would worry at her and sooner or later she must tell him all the truth and how would she ever make him see how what had been a little lie at first to save her pride as woman, had grown great and firm now with its roots in years, and very hard to change?
And then she tried to comfort herself again, and to say the man must be dead. Whoever heard of any man who would not come back sometimes to his land and his sons and his old home, if he yet lived? He was dead. She was sure he was dead, and so saying many times, sureness came into her heart and she believed him dead and there was needed but an outward sign to satisfy the lad and those who were in the hamlet.
Once more she went into the town then on this old task, and she went and sought a new letter writer this time, whom she had never seen before, and she sighed and said, “Write to my brother’s wife and say her husband is dead. And how did he die? He was caught in a burning house, for the house where he lived caught on fire from a lamp turned over by some slave, and there he burned up in his sleep and even his ashes are lost so there is no body to send home.”
And the letter writer wrote her own name for the sister’s name and she gave a false name as of some stranger who wrote to tell the news and for a little more he wrote the name of some other town than this, and he scented something strange here, but he let it pass, too, since it was none of his affair and he had silver here to pay for silence.
So was the woman saved. But she could not wait to finish her salvation. No, she must let the landlord’s agent know somehow, and she went here and there and asked where the landlord’s old home was, where he did not live now but where the agent doubtless was well known. And she grew heedless in her anxiety to be saved, and she ran there and it seemed the gods were with her on that day and aided her, for there he came alone and she met him at the gate of the house and as he was ready to turn in to it. Then she cried out and laid her hand upon his arm, and he looked down at her and at her hand upon his arm and he said, “What is it, woman?”
And she whispered, “Sir, I am widowed—I have but heard this day I am widowed!”
And he shook her hand off and he said loudly, “What is that to me!” And when she looked at him painfully he said roughly, “I paid you—I paid you very well!” And suddenly someone he knew called out from the street and laughed and said, “How now, good fellow? And a very pretty, lusty goodwife, too, to lay hold on a man thus!”
But the man called back, scarcely lifting those heavy lids of his, and he said coldly, “Aye—if you like them coarse and brown, but I do not!” And he went on his way.
She stood there then astonished and ashamed and understanding nothing. But how had she been paid? What had he ever given her? And suddenly she remembered the trinkets he had given her. That was her pay! Yes, by those small worthless trinkets he held himself free of all that he had done.
What could she do, then, knowing all? She set her feet steadfastly upon the road to home, her heart deathly still within her, and she said over and over, “It is not time to weep yet—the hour is not come yet when I may weep.” And she would not let her weeping come. No, the weeping gathered in her great and tremulous but she would not weep. She held her heart hard and silent for a day or two, until the news came, the letter she had written, and she took it to the reader in the hamlet, and she said steadily as she gave it to him, “I fear there is ill news in it, uncle—it is come out of time.”
Then the old man took it and he read it and started and he cried, “It is bad news, goodwife—be ready!”
“Is he ill?” she said in her same steady way.
And the old man laid the letter down and took the spectacles from his eyes and he answered solemnly, staring at her, “Dead!”
Then the mother threw her apron over her head and she wept. Yes, she could weep now and she wept, safely, and she wept on and on as though she knew him truly dead. She wept for all her lonely years and because her life had been so warped and lone and she wept because her destiny had been so ill and the man gone, and she wept because she dared not bear this child she had in her, and last she wept because she was a woman scorned. All the weeping she had been afraid to do lest child hear her or neighbor, now she could weep out and none need know how many were the sorrows that she wept.
The women of the hamlet came running out to comfort her when they heard the news and they comforted her and cried out she must not fall ill with weeping, for there were her children still and the two good sons,
