And the old man grinned and nodded and laughed a meager laugh and said, wheezing as he spoke with laughter, “Aye, soft as any babe he is, goodwife!” And at last he said impatiently, “I must be gone if I am to fetch her home by night!”
So not knowing what else to do, the mother set her maid upon the ass’s back at last, the maid garbed in her new garments, and the mother pressed into her hand the little packet of silver and whispered quickly, “This is for your own, my maid, and do not let them have it from you.” And as the old man kicked the ass’s legs to set it going the mother cried aloud in sudden agony, “I will come, my maid, before many months are past and see how they do treat you there, and keep all in your heart and tell me then. I shall not fear to bring you home again, my maid, if aught is wrong.”
Then the blind maid answered through her dry and trembling lips, “Yes, mother, and that cheers me.”
But the mother could not let her child go yet and she cast here and there desperately in her mind to think of some last thing to say and hold her yet a little longer, and she cried out to the old man, clinging to her maid, “My maid is not to feed the fire, old man—she shall not feed the fire, for it hurts her eyes—the smoke—”
The old man turned and stared and when he understood he grinned and said, “Oh, aye, well, let it be so—I’ll tell them—” and kicked the beast again and walked beside it as it went.
So the maid went away, and she held her sign of blindness in her hand, and had her little roll of garments tied behind her on the ass’s back. The mother stood and watched her go, her heart aching past belief, tears welling from her eyes, and this although she did not know what else she could have done. So she stood still until the hill rose between and cut the child from her sight and she saw her no more.
XVI
Now must the mother somehow make her days full to ease the fears she had and to forget the emptiness where once the blind maid had sat. Silent the house seemed and silent the street where she could not hear the clear plaintive sound of the small bell her daughter struck whenever she went out. And the mother could not bear it. She went to the land again, against her elder son’s will, and when he saw her take her hoe he said, “Mother, you need not work, it shames me to have you work in the field and others see you there when you are aged.”
But she said with her old anger, “I am not so aged—let me work to ease myself. Do you not see how I must ease myself?”
Then the man answered in his stubborn way, “To me you seem to grieve for what is not so, my mother, and there is no need to let your heart run ahead into evils that may never come.”
But the mother answered with a sort of heavy listlessness that did not leave her nowadays, “You do not understand. You who are young—you understand nothing at all.”
The young man looked dazed at his mother then, not knowing what she meant, but she would say no more, but went and took a hoe and plodded out across the fields in silence.
But it was true she could not work hard any more, for when she did her sweat poured out, and when the wind blew on her, even a warm wind, it sent a chill upon her and she was soon ill again with her flux. So must she bear her idleness and she worked no more when she was well again, but sat in the doorway idle. There was no need for her to lift her hand about the house, since the son’s wife did all and did all well and carefully.
She did all well, the mother thought unwillingly, except she bore no child. The mother sitting empty there looked restlessly about that threshold where once she had been wont to see her little children tumbling in their play, and all day long she sat and remembered the days gone, and how once she had sat so young and filled with life and work, her man there, her babes, she the young wife and another the old mother. Then her man was gone and never heard from—and she winced and turned her mind from that, and then she thought how empty it seemed now, the elder son in the field all day or bickering at harvest with the landlord’s agent, some new fellow, a little weazened cousin of the landlord’s, people said—she never looked at him—and her blind maid gone, and her younger son gone always in the town and seldom home.
Well, but there was her younger son, and as she sat she thought of him more often, for she loved him still the best of all her children. Into her emptiness he came now and then, and with his coming brought her only brightness. When he came she rose and came out of her bleakness and smiled to see his good looks. He was the fairest child she had, as like his father as a cockerel is like a cock who fathered him, and he came in at ease nowadays, and not fearing his elder brother as once he did, for he had some sort of work in town that brought him in a wage.
Now what this work was he never clearly said, except that it brought him in so well that sometimes he had a heap of money, and sometimes
