The Mother

its end in them, and then the son began, “I do not know what the crime is rightly, but they call him what I told you, a communist. A new word⁠—I have heard it often, and when I asked what it was it seemed to be a sort of robber band. I asked the guard there at the gaol, who stands with a gun across his arm, and he answered, ‘What is he? Why, one who would even take your land from you, goodman, for himself, and one who contrives against the state and so must die with all his fellows.’ Aye, that is his crime.”

The mother listened hard to this, the candle’s light falling on her face that glistened with dried tears, and she said astounded, her voice trembling while she strove to make it firm, “But I do not think it can be so. I never heard him say a word like this. I never heard of such a crime. To kill a man, to rob a house, to let a parent starve, these be crimes. But how can land be robbed? Can he roll it up like cloth and take it away with him and hide it somewhere?”

“I do not know, mother,” said the son, his head hanging, his hands hanging loose between his knees as he sat upon a little stool. He wore his one robe still, but he had tucked the edge into his girdle, for he was not used to robes, and now he put it in more firmly and then he said slowly, “I do not know what else was said, a great deal here and there in the town we heard, because so many are to be killed tomorrow and they make a holiday. What else was said, my cousin?”

Then the cousin’s son scratched his chin and swallowed hard and stared at the faces round about him in the room and he said, “There was a great deal said by those town folk, but I dared not ask much for when I asked more closely what the pother was about the guards at the gaol turned on me and said, ‘Are you one of them, too? What is it then to you if they are killed?’ And I dared not say I was the cousin of one to be killed. But we did find a chief gaoler and we gave him some money and begged for a private place to speak in and he led us to a corner of the gaol behind his own house and we told him we were honest country folk and had a little poor land and rented more, and that there was one among the doomed to die who was a distant relative, and if we could save him then we would for honor’s sake, since none of our name had died under a headsman’s blade before. But only if it did not cost too much since we were poor. The gaoler took the silver then and asked how the lad looked and we told him and he said, ‘I think I know the lad you mean, for he has been very ill at ease in gaol, and I think he would say all he knows, except there is a maid beside him bold as any I have ever seen who keeps him brave. Yes, some are hard and bold and do not care however they may die or when they die. But that lad is afraid. I doubt he knows what he has done or why he dies, for he looks a simple country lad they have used for their bidding and made great promises to him. I believe his crime is that he was found with certain books upon him that he gave among the people freely, and in the books are evil things said of overturning all the state and sharing all the money and the land alike.’ ”

Then the mother looked at her elder son and broke out in fresh weeping and she moaned, “I knew we ought to let him have some land. We might have rented a little more and given him a share⁠—but no, this elder son of mine and his wife must hold it all and grudge him everything⁠—”

Then the elder son opened his mouth to speak, but the old cousin said quietly, “Do not speak, my son. Let your mother blame you and ease herself. We all know what you are and what your brother was and how ill he hated any labor on the land or any labor anywhere.”

So the son held his peace. At last the cousin’s son said on, “We asked the gaoler then how much silver it would take to set the lad free, and the gaoler shook his head and said that if the lad were high of place and son of some great rich and mighty man then doubtless silver used could set him free. But being a country lad and poor no man would put his life in danger for all that we could give, and so doubtless he must die.”

At this the mother shrieked, “And shall he die because he is my son and I am poor? We have that land we own and we will sell it to free him. Yes, we will sell it this very night⁠—there are those in this hamlet⁠—”

But the elder son spoke up at this talk of his land and he said, “And how then will we live? We can scarcely live even as it is and if we rent more and at these new and ruinous rates we have now we shall be beggars. All we own is this small parcel of land and I will not sell it, mother. No, the land is mine⁠—I will not sell it.”

And when he said this his wife spoke up, to say the only thing she had said all the time, for she had sat there quietly listening, her pale face grave and showing nothing and