The Mother: A Novel (16 page)

They went along the country road and through the hamlet before there was a stir, it was so early. The mother strode freely, strong again as she had not been for long, her head high and free against the misty air, and she led her daughter by the hand, and the girl struggled to move quickly, too. But she had not known how little she could see. About the well known ways of home her feet went easily and surely enough and she did not know she went by feel and scent and not by sight, but here the road was strange to her, now high, now low, for the stones were sunken sometimes, and often she would have fallen had it not been for her mother’s hand.

Then the mother seeing this was frightened and her heart ran ahead to meet this fresh evil and she cried out afraid, “I doubt I have brought you too late, poor child. But you never told me that you could not see and I thought it was but the water in your eyes that kept you blinded.”

And the girl half sobbing answered, “I thought I saw well enough, too, my mother, and I think I do, only this road is so up and down, and you go more quickly than I am used to go.”

Then the mother slowed her steps and said no more and they went on, more slowly, save that when they came near to that shop of medicine the mother made haste again without knowing that she did, she was so eager. It was still early in the day and they were the first buyers and the medicine seller was but taking down the boards from his shop doors, and he did it slowly, stopping often to yawn and thrust his fingers into his long and uncombed hair and scratch his head. When he looked up and saw this countrywoman and the girl standing there before his counter he was amazed and he cried out, “What is it you want at such an early hour?”

Then the mother pointed to her child and she said, “Is there any balm that you have for such eyes as these?”

The man stared at the girl then and at her seared and red-rimmed eyes that she could scarcely open at all so red and seared they were, and he said, “How has she come by such eyes?”

The mother answered, “At first we thought it was the smoke made them so. My man is dead and I have a man’s work to do on the land, and often has she fed the fire if I came home late. But these last years it seems more than this, for I have saved her the smoke, and there seems some heat that comes up in her of its own accord and burns her eyes. What fire it can be I do not know, being as she is the mildest maid, and never even out of temper.”

Then the man shook his head, yawning widely again, and he said carelessly, “There are many who have eyes like these from some fire in them, various fires they be, and there is no balm to heal such fever. It will come up and up. Aye, and there is no healing.”

Now these words fell like iron upon the two hearts that heard them and the mother said in a low swift voice, “But there may be—there must be some physician somewhere. Do you know of any good physician not too costly, since we be poor?”

But the man shook his tousled head languidly and went to fetch some drug he kept in a little box of wood, and he said as he went, “There is no skill to make her see, and this I know for I have seen a many such sore eyes, and every day people come here with such eyes and cry of inner fever. Aye, and even those foreign doctors have no true good way I hear, for though they cut the eyes open again and rub the inner part with magic stones and mutter runes and prayers, still the inner fires come up and burn the eyes again, and none can cut away that fire for it burns inside the seat of life. Yet here is a cooling powder that will cool a little while, though heal it cannot.”

And he fetched a powder rolled in little grains like wheat and the color of a dark wheat, and he put them into a goose quill and sealed the other end with tallow and he said again, “Aye, she is blind, goodwife.” And when he saw how the young girl’s face looked at this news and how she was bewildered like a child is who has received a heavy unseen blow, he added, half kindly, too, “And what use to grieve? It is her destiny. In some other life she must have done an evil thing, looked on some forbidden sight, and so received this curse. Or else her father may have sinned, or even you, goodwife—who knows the heart? But however that may be the curse is here upon her and none can change what heaven wills.” And again he yawned, his brief kindness done, and he took the pence the woman gave him and shuffled into some inner room.

As for the mother, she spoke back with brave anger and she said, “She is not blind! Whoever heard of sore eyes making people blind? My man’s mother’s eyes were sore from childhood, but she did not die blind!” And she went quickly before the man could make an answer, and she held the girl’s hand hard to stay its trembling, and she went to a silversmith, not to that same one, and she took from her bosom that packet and she gave it to the bearded man who kept the shop and said, in a low voice, “Change me these into coin, for my man is dead and I cannot wear them more.”

Then while the old man weighed out the trinkets to see what their worth was in coin, she waited and the young girl began to sob a little softly in her sleeve and then she said out from her sobs, “I do not believe I am truly blind, mother, for it seems to me I see something shining there on the scales, and if I were blind I could not see it, could I? What is that shining?”

Then the mother knew the girl was blind indeed, or good as blind, for the trinkets lay bright and plain not two feet from the girl’s face, and she groaned in herself and she said, “You are right, too, child, and it is a bit of silver I had in a ring and I cannot wear now, and so I change it into coin we can use.”

And in this new sorrow come upon her the woman gave no single thought to the trinkets when they were gone or thought of what they meant. No, she only thought of this, that with all their silvery shining her child could not see them, and the old man took them and hung them in his little case where he kept bracelets and rings and chains for children’s necks and such pretty things, and she forgot all they had meant to her except, now, a shining thing her blind child could not see.

Yet was there one thing more to do, and she knew that she must do, if so be the child was to be truly blind. Holding the girl’s hand she went along, shielding her from those who passed, for by now the streets were thronged and many came to buy and sell, farmers and gardeners setting their baskets of green and fresh vegetables along the sides of the streets, and fishermen setting out their tubs of fish there too. But the mother went until she came to a certain shop and she left the girl beside the door and went in alone, and when a clerk came forward to know what she would have, she pointed at a thing and said, “That,” and it was the small brass gong and the little wooden hammer tied to it that the blind use when they walk to warn others they are blind. The clerk struck it once or twice to show its worth before he wrapped it, and hearing that sound the young girl lifted her head quickly and called, “Mother, there is a blind man here, for I hear a sound clear as a bell.”

The clerk laughed loudly then, for well he saw the maid was blind, and he burst out, “There be none but—”

But the mother scowled at him so sourly that he left his words hanging as they were and gave the thing to her quickly and stood and stared like any fool at her while she went away, not knowing what to make of it.

They went home then and the young girl was contented to go home, for as the morning wore on the town grew full of noise and bustle and frightening sounds she was not used to hear and loud voices bawling in a bargain and rude thrusts against her from those she could not see, and she put her little foot here and there, feeling in her delicate way as she went, smiling unconsciously in her pain. But the mother grieved most bitterly in secret and she held hard in her other hand the thing she had bought, which is the sign of those who are blind.

Yet though she had this little gong, she could not give it to the girl. She could not take it that the girl’s eyes were wholly sightless. She waited through the summer and they reaped the grain again, and it was measured to the new agent that the landlord sent, an old man this time, some poor cousin or distant kin, and autumn came, but still the mother could not give the girl the sign. No, there was a thing yet she must do, a prayer to make. For seeing daily her blind child, the mother remembered what the apothecary had said that day, “Some sin her parents did, perhaps—who knows the heart?”

She told herself that she would set forth to a temple that she knew—not to that wayside shrine nor ever to those gods whose faces she had covered—but to a temple far away, a whole ten miles and more, where she had heard there was a kind and potent goddess who heard women when they prayed bitterly. The mother told her two sons why she went and they were grave and awed to think what had befallen their sister. The elder said in his old man’s way, “I have been long afraid there was a thing wrong with her.” But the younger lad cried out astonished, “As for me, I never dreamed there was aught wrong with her eyes I am so used to her as she is!”

And the mother told the maid too and she said, “Daughter, I go to the temple to the south where there is that living goddess, and it is the selfsame one who gave the son to Li the Sixth’s wife when she had gone barren all her life long and she was nearing the end of her time to bear, and her man grew impatient and would have taken a concubine he was so angry with her barrenness, and she went and prayed and there came that fine good son she has.”

And the maid answered, “Well I remember it, mother, and she made two silken shoes for the goddess and gave them when the boy was born. Aye, mother, go quickly, for she is a true good goddess.”

So the mother set forth alone, and all day she struggled against the wind which blew unceasing through this month, blowing down the cold with it as it came out of the desert north, so that the leaves shriveled on the trees and the wayside grass turned crisp and sere and all things came to blight and death. But heavier than the wind, more bitter, was the fear of the mother now and she feared that her own sin had come upon the child. When at last she came into the temple she did not see at all how great and fine it was, its walls painted rosy red and the gods gilded and many people coming to and fro for worship. No, she went quickly in, searching out that one goddess that she knew, and she bought a bit of incense at the door where it was sold, and she said to the first gray priest she saw, “Where is the living goddess?”

Then he, supposing her from her common looks to be but one of those many women who came each day to ask for sons, pointed with his pursed mouth to a dark corner where a small old dingy goddess sat between two lesser figures who attended her. There the mother went and stood and waited while an old bent woman muttered her prayers for a son who could not move and had lain these many years, she told the goddess, on his bed, so stricken he could not even beget a son again, and the old woman prayed and said, “If there be a sin in our house for which we have not atoned, then tell me, lady goddess, if this is why he lies there, and I will atone—I will atone!”

Then the old woman rose and coughing and sighing she went her way and the mother knelt and said her wish, too. But she could not forget what the old woman had said, and to the mother it seemed the goddess looked down harshly, and that the smooth golden face stared down fixed and unmoved by the sinful soul who prayed, whose sin was not atoned.

So the mother rose at last and sighed most heavily, not knowing what her prayer was worth, and she lit her incense and went away again. When she had walked the ten miles and come to her own door once more, cold and weary, she sank upon the stool and she said sadly when the children asked her how the goddess heard her prayer, “How do I know what heaven wills? I could but say my prayer and it must be as heaven wills and we can only wait and see how it will be.”

But with all her secret heart she wished she had not sinned her sin. The more she wished the more she wondered how she could have done it, and all her gorge rose against that smooth-faced man and she loathed him for her sin’s sake and because she could not now in any way undo what had been done. At that hour of deep loathing she was healed of all her heat and youth, and she was young no more. For her there was no man left in the world for man’s own sake, and there were only these three her children, and one blind.

N
OW THE MOTHER WAS
no longer young. She was in her forty and third year, and when she counted on her fingers sometimes in the night how many years her children’s father had been gone, she used the fingers of her two hands and two more over again, and even the years that she had let the hamlet think him dead were more than all the fingers on one hand.

Yet she walked straight and slight as ever, and no flesh grew on her frame. Others might begin to shrivel or grow fat as the cousin’s wife did each year, and the old gossip, too, yet this woman stayed lean and strong as she had been when she was young. But her breasts grew small and dry, and in the strong sunlight where one saw her face full, there were lines about the eyes from working in the bright hard sunshine, and the skin was dark with the burning of the many years in the fields. She moved somewhat more slowly than she did, too, without the old lightness, for she had never been as she was before she tore that wild life out of her. When she was called for childbirth in the hamlet as she often was now, seeing she was widowed and counted as among the ones not young, she found it hard to move so quickly as she must sometimes, and once or twice a young mother caught the child herself, and once she even let a newborn babe fall to the brick floor and bruise its head, and it was a boy, too, but still no harm was done in the end most luckily, for the lad grew up sturdy and with all his senses in him.

As her children grew, to them their mother seemed old. The eldest was forever urging her to rest herself and not to heave so at the hard great clods when the land was ploughed but let him do it, for he did it easily now in the strength of his young manhood, and he strove to have her do the lesser lighter things, and nothing pleased him better than to see her sit quietly upon her stool in the shade on a summer’s day sewing, and let him go to the land alone.