The mother answered, “At first we thought it was the smoke made them so. My man is dead and I have a man’s work to do on the land, and often has she fed the fire if I came home late. But these last years it seems more than this, for I have saved her the smoke, and there seems some heat that comes up in her of its own accord and burns her eyes. What fire it can be I do not know, being as she is the mildest maid, and never even out of temper.”
Then the man shook his head, yawning widely again, and he said carelessly, “There are many who have eyes like these from some fire in them, various fires they be, and there is no balm to heal such fever. It will come up and up. Aye, and there is no healing.”
Now these words fell like iron upon the two hearts that heard them and the mother said in a low swift voice, “But there may be—there must be some physician somewhere. Do you know of any good physician not too costly, since we be poor?”
But the man shook his tousled head languidly and went to fetch some drug he kept in a little box of wood, and he said as he went, “There is no skill to make her see, and this I know for I have seen a many such sore eyes, and every day people come here with such eyes and cry of inner fever. Aye, and even those foreign doctors have no true good way I hear, for though they cut the eyes open again and rub the inner part with magic stones and mutter runes and prayers, still the inner fires come up and burn the eyes again, and none can cut away that fire for it burns inside the seat of life. Yet here is a cooling powder that will cool a little while, though heal it cannot.”
And he fetched a powder rolled in little grains like wheat and the color of a dark wheat, and he put them into a goose quill and sealed the other end with tallow and he said again, “Aye, she is blind, goodwife.” And when he saw how the young girl’s face looked at this news and how she was bewildered like a child is who has received a heavy unseen blow, he added, half kindly, too, “And what use to grieve? It is her destiny. In some other life she must have done an evil thing, looked on some forbidden sight, and so received this curse. Or else her father may have sinned, or even you, goodwife—who knows the heart? But however that may be the curse is here upon her and none can change what heaven wills.” And again he yawned, his brief kindness done, and he took the pence the woman gave him and shuffled into some inner room.
As for the mother, she spoke back with brave anger and she said, “She is not blind! Whoever heard of sore eyes making people blind? My man’s mother’s eyes were sore from childhood, but she did not die blind!” And she went quickly before the man could make an answer, and she held the girl’s hand hard to stay its trembling, and she went to a silversmith, not to that same one, and she took from her bosom that packet and she gave it to the bearded man who kept the shop and said, in a low voice, “Change me these into coin, for my man is dead and I cannot wear them more.”
Then while the old man weighed out the trinkets to see what their worth was in coin, she waited and the young girl began to sob a little softly in her sleeve and then she said out from her sobs, “I do not believe I am truly blind, mother, for it seems to me I see something shining there on the scales, and if I were blind I could not see it, could I? What is that shining?”
Then the mother knew the girl was blind indeed, or good as blind, for the trinkets lay bright and plain not two feet from the girl’s face, and she groaned in herself and she said, “You are right, too, child, and it is a bit of silver I had in a ring and I cannot wear now, and so I change it into coin we can use.”
And in this new sorrow come upon her the woman gave no single thought to the trinkets when they were gone or thought of what they meant. No, she only thought of this, that with all their silvery shining her child could not see them, and the old man took them and hung them in his little case where he kept bracelets and rings and chains for children’s necks and such pretty things, and she forgot all they had meant to her except, now, a shining thing her blind child could not see.
Yet was there one thing more to do, and she knew that she must do, if so be the child was to be truly blind. Holding the girl’s hand she went along, shielding her from those who passed, for by now the streets were thronged and many came to buy and sell, farmers and gardeners setting their baskets of green and fresh vegetables along the sides of the streets, and fishermen setting out their tubs of fish there too. But the mother went until she came to a certain shop and she left the girl beside the door and went in alone, and when a clerk came forward to know what she would have, she pointed at a thing and said, “That,” and it was the small brass gong and the little wooden hammer tied
