The Mother

dried curd they made there from beans, and although the mother leaned on her in every sort of way and called to her if she would so much as turn herself in her bed, yet the son’s wife was no comfort to her, and often when she did her most careful best the mother would scold her that her hands were cold or her face so yellow and stare at her in some half hostile, childish way. But still the older woman never blamed the son’s wife any more that she was childless. No, she said no more of that, believing somehow dimly that her own sins might be the cause.

But she rose from her bed at last, and when the autumn was well gone the sharpness of her pain had ebbed with it and she was dreary all day long but not frantic, and she could think of her maid, but the edge of pain was gone. At last she even said to her own heart, “Aye, perhaps even what they say is true, perhaps it is better that my maid is dead. There are so many things worse than death.”

And she held fast to this one thought.

And all the hamlet helped her. No one ever spoke of the maid again before her, nor doubtless anywhere, since there is nothing to be remembered in a blind maid and there are many like her everywhere. First they did not speak of her where the mother was, to spare the mother pain, and then they did not speak because there was naught new to tell of it, and because other news came of other things and people, and the maid’s little life was ended.

For a while the gossip went carefully where the mother was and took thought not to be alone with her, but when she saw how feeble the mother was when she rose up from her bed, she grew cheerful then and called out greeting as she ever had.

And the mother let the past be silent, except sometimes in her own heart.

XVIII

Then did it seem as though the mother’s heart might have some comfort, for in the springtime of that year the younger son came home and he said, “I am come home to stay a while, mother, how long I do not know, but at least until I am bid to go again.”

But when she rejoiced he made little answer and scarcely seemed himself. He was so quiet, never singing or playing his capers or talking in any reckless way as he was used to do, that the mother’s heart wondered if he might be ill or troubled with some secret thing. But when she spoke this fear to the cousin’s wife that one said, mildly, “Well, it may be he is passing out of his childhood. How many are his years, now? The same I think as my fifth child, and she is twenty now and nearly twenty-one and wed four years. Yes, twenty-one is out of childhood, and men should not caper then as once they did, although I remember that man of yours could caper even to that last day I saw him.”

“Aye,” said the mother, sighing. Very dim in her now was the memory of the man, and mingled somehow with this younger son of hers, and sometimes when she remembered she could not think how her man had looked alone, because the son’s face rose there in his stead.

But at the end of nine days the younger son went as quickly as he came and almost secretly, though how he had his message he must go none knew. But go he did, putting his few garments in a little leathern box he had. His mother grieved to see him go and cried, “I thought you were come to stay, my son,” but the son replied, “Oh, I shall be back again, my mother,” and he seemed secretly gay again somehow, and eager to be gone.

Thereafter was he always gay. He came and went without warning. He would come in perhaps one day, his roll of clothing under his arm and there he was. And for a day or two he would idle about the little hamlet and sit in the teashop and make great talk of how ill the times were and how uneven justice was and how some great day all this would be made better, and men listened staring at each other, not knowing what to make of it, and the innkeeper scratched his greasy head and cried, “I do swear it sounds like robbers’ talk to me, neighbors!” But for the mother’s sake and for the good elder son’s sake they let him be, thinking him but childish still and to be wiser when he was wed and had a man’s life.

Yet when he came home this younger son still sat idle, or else he made as if to help his brother at some light task, although when he did this the brother said scornfully always, “I thank you, brother, but I am used to doing work without you.”

Then the youth looked at him in his impudent way, for he grew a very impudent eye these last days, and he would not quarrel but he laughed coolly and he said, and spat in the dust while he said it, “As you will, my elder brother,” and he was so cool his elder brother well-nigh burst with hatred of him and gladly would have told him to stay away forever except that a man may not tell his brother this and still be righteous in his neighbors’ eyes.

But the mother saw no fault in him at all. Even when he talked his big talk with her and said against his elder brother, “I swear these little landowners that must even rent before they can live, these little men, they are so small and proud that they deserve what shall befall them one day when all