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
