But she spoke no more of heats, for she feared to have the cousin’s wife bring up again that old ill done, although the cousin’s wife was the kindest soul and never all these years had made a difference of it, and if she had even told her man then the mother never knew she did. If it had not been for these two sorrows that she had, the blind maid and that her son had no sons, she might have forgotten it herself, so far away the days of her flesh seemed now. Yes, she might have forgotten it if she had not feared it had been sin and these two sorrows the punishment for it.
But there her life was, and the maid was blind and gone now and there was no child, and only the beasts about and the dog and even these she dared not feed.
There was only this good thing nowadays, she thought, and it was that her two sons did not quarrel so much. The elder was satisfied and master in the house, and the younger had his own place somewhere, and when he came home and went away again, the most the elder son did was to say with feeble scorn, “I wonder where my brother gets those good clothes he wears and what the work is that he does. I cannot wear clothes like his and I work bitterly. He seems to have money somehow. I hope he is not in some band of town thieves or something that will drag us into trouble if he is caught.”
Then the mother flew up bravely as she always did for her little son and she said, “A very good younger brother, my son, and you should praise him and be glad he has gone and found a thing to do for himself and not stayed here to share the land with you!”
And the elder son said sneeringly, “Oh, aye, he would do anything I swear to keep from labor on the land.”
But the son’s wife said nothing. She was pleased these days because the house was all her own and it was naught to her what the young man did, and she did not complain because he bought his clothes elsewhere now and she needed not to make them for him.
So the time went on and spring came and passed and early summer came and still the mother never could forget her maid. One day she sat counting on her fingers the days since that one when she saw the hill cut the maid off from her sight, and it was more than twelve times all the fingers on her hands and then she lost the count, and so she thought sadly, “I must go to her. I have let this old heaviness weigh on me and I ought to have gone before. If she had been a sound maid she would have come by now to pay the visit that wives do to their old homes, and I could have asked her how she did and felt her hands and arms and cheeks and seen the color of her face.”
And the mother sat and looked at those hills around and saw how the summer came on to its full height and every hillside was green and all the grain high in the fields, and she forced her body that was weary always now even though she was idle all the livelong day, and she thought, “I must go and see my maid and I will go at once, seeing I am not needed on the land and here I sit idle. I will go and before the great heat comes, lest my flux drop on me again unaware. Yes—I will go this very tomorrow since there is no sign of cloud in this fair sky—this blue sky—” she looked up at the sky and saw how blue it was and remembered suddenly as she did nowadays some bit of her life long gone, and she remembered the blue robe her man had bought once and that he wore away and she sighed and thought with some dim old pang, “On such a day as this he bought the robe and we quarreled—on just such a fair day, for I remember the robe was the color of the sky that day.” She sighed and rose to drive the thought away and when her elder son came she said restlessly, “I think to go and see your sister tomorrow, and how she does in the house where she was wed, seeing she cannot come to me.”
Then the son said, anxiously, “Mother, I cannot go with you now, for there is work to do tomorrow. Wait until the harvest is over and the grain threshed and measured, and I have a little free time.”
But suddenly the mother could not wait. There was strength in her a plenty yet when she had something she set her mind to do, and she was weary of her idleness and sitting and she said, “No, I will go tomorrow!”
And the son said, worried still and he was always easily worried if aught came that was sudden and out of the common and he could not think what to do quickly, “But how will you go, mother?”
She said, “Why, I will ride my cousin’s ass if he will lend it, and do you bid a lad of his to go and call your brother to walk beside and lead the ass, and we will go safe enough, the two of us, for there are no robbers near these days that I have heard tell of, except that new kind in the town they call the communists, who do not harm the poor, they say—”
At last the son was willing, though not too easily and not until his wife said quietly, “It is true I cannot see any great danger if the younger one goes with her.”
So
