The Mother: A Novel (18 page)

But he would say no more. He fell to the sheaves again and worked as though some demon had him, he worked so hard and fast. The mother stood looking at him, not knowing what to do, feeling he was hard, too, with her little son, and yet knowing somehow she was wrong. Then as she looked she saw the young man was very near to tears, so that he set his jaws hard to keep back a sob, and when she saw this sign of feeling in him, such as she had never seen in him who always seemed so usual and content and without any desire, her heart grew soft as ever it did when she had harmed a child of hers, although he did not know it, and she softened to him more than she had ever done before and she cried quickly, “Son, I am wrong, I know. I have not done well enough for you of late. I have not seen how you have grown into a man. But man you are, and now I see it, and you shall take the man’s place in our house and you shall have the money and the chief place in name as well as in the labor you have always done. Yes, I see you are a man now, and I will do straightway what I have put off too long. I will find a wife for you and it will be your turn now and hers. I have not seen it, but now I see it well.”

So she made amends. He muttered something then that she could not hear and turned his back and said no more but worked on. But she felt eased by her amends and went back crying briskly, “Well, and all the rice will be burned, I swear—” and this she said to cover up the feeling of the moment and make it usual.

But when she was home again she busied herself here and there forgetting all her weariness, and when the maid asked, “Mother, what was wrong?” she answered quickly, “Nothing much amiss, child, except your younger brother would not do his share, or so his brother said. But brothers always quarrel, I think,” and she ran and made an extra dish from some radishes she pulled, and sliced them and poured vinegar upon them and sesame oil and soy sauce, such as she knew her son loved. And as she worked she pondered her amends and it seemed true to her her son should wed and she blamed herself because she had leaned on him as on a man, and yet he had not man’s reward, and she set her mind to do all that she had said she would.

Her elder son came in at last and later than usual so that it was wholly dark and she could not see his face until he came within the light of the candle she had lit and set ready on the table. She looked at him closely then, without his seeing her, and she saw he was himself again and pleased with what she had said and all his anger gone. And seeing this peace upon her elder son she called to the younger one who hung about the door, not daring to come in until he knew his brother’s temper, and yet driven by hunger, too, and she called out, “Come in, little son!”

And he came in, his eyes upon his brother. But the elder paid no heed to him, his anger gone for this time, and the mother was well content and knew she had decided well and so she moved to carry out her promise to the end.

And as she ever did in any little trouble, she went to the cousin and to the cousin’s wife, for she herself knew no maid, since none in that hamlet could be chosen, seeing all were kin by blood and marriage and had the same surname, nor did she know any maid in town, for there she had dealings only with such small shops as bought the little she had to sell. She went at an hour in evening, for the year was yet warm although early autumn was near, and they sat and talked while the cousin’s wife suckled her last child. The mother made known her want at last and said, “Then do you know any maid, my sister, in that village where you lived before you were wed? A maid like yourself I would like very well, easy tempered and quick to bear and good enough at labor. The house I can tend myself yet for many a year, and if she be not so good in the house I can endure it.”

The good cousin’s wife laughed at this loudly and looked at her man and cried, “I do not know if he would say your son would count it curse or blessing to have one like me.”

Then the man looked up in his slow way, a bit of rice stalk in his mouth which he had sat chewing as he listened, and he answered thoughtfully, “Oh, aye—good enough—” and his wife laughed again to hear his lukewarmness and then she said, “Well, and I can go there and see, sister, and there are two hundred families or so in that village, a market-town it is, and doubtless one maid among so many ready to be wed.”

So they talked on of it and the mother said plainly there must not be too great a cost, and she said, “I know very well I cannot hope for one of the very best in every way, since I am poor and my son has no great lot of land and we must rent more than we own.”

But the man spoke up and said to this, “Well, but you do own some land, and it is something nowadays when many have nothing at all, and I had liefer wed a maid of mine to a man who has some land and little silver than to one who has much silver and no firm land to stand on. A good man and good land—that would be sound promise for any maid if she were mine.” And when his wife said, “Well, then, children’s father, if you will let me go, I can go to that town a day or two, and look about,” then he said in his spare way, “Oh, aye, I will—the maids are old enough to free you now and then.”

So soon thereafter the cousin’s wife dressed herself clean and took the babe and a child or two among the little ones to show her father’s family and she took an elder two or so to help her with the little ones, and hired a wheelbarrow to put them all upon and she rode her husband’s gray ass he did not need these days now that the harvest was over and he could use his ox to tread the grain. They set forth thus and were gone three days and more. And when she was come back she was right full of all the maids that she had seen and she said to the mother, who ran to hear her when the news came she had returned,

“Maids there be a plenty in that village for we never kill them there as they do in some towns when babes are girls, and they are allowed to grow however many a mother has, and so the village is full of them. I saw a dozen that I knew myself, sister, all well grown and full of flesh and color, and any would have done for any son I have. But still only one was needed and I narrowed my two eyes and looked at this one and that one, and chose out three, and out of the three I looked again and saw one had a cough and a bubbly nose, and one was with some soreness of the eyes, and the third was best. She is a sharp and clever maid, I swear, very careful in all she says and does, and they say she is the quickest seamstress in the town. She makes her own clothes and clothes for all her father’s house and some for others and turns a bit of silver in. A little old she is, perhaps, for your lad, because once she was betrothed, and the man died out of time, or she would be wed by now. But this is not ill, either, for the father is eager to wed her somehow and will not ask much for her. She is not so pretty perhaps as the others—her face a little yellow from sewing overmuch, but she is clean-eyed.”

Then the mother answered quickly, “We have sore eyes enough in our house, I swear, and my eyes are not what they were either, and we need someone who sews and likes it. Settle it then, my sister, with this one, and if she is not above five years older than my son, it is well enough.”

So was it done, and the days of the month and the years in which the two were born and the hours of their birth were compared upon a geomancer’s table in the town, and they were all favorable. The young man was born under the sign of horse, and the maid under the sign of cat, which do not devour each other, and thus was harmony foretold in the marriage. All things being right by destiny, therefore, the gifts that must be given were given.

Now out of her little hidden store the mother brought forth bits of silver and odd copper coins and she bought good cotton stuffs and made two garments for the maid, herself. And as the custom was in those parts she wished a lucky woman to cut the garments, some woman whose life was whole with man and sons. What woman then was more lucky in the hamlet than the cousin’s wife? The mother took the good stuff to her and said, “Set your hand here, my sister, so that your luck may fall upon my son’s wife.”

And so the cousin’s wife did, and she cut the garments wide and full across the belly so that when the maid conceived they could be worn with ease and not laid aside to waste.

And the mother put forth more silver and hired the red marriage chair and the bead crown and the earrings of false pearls and all that was needful for the day, and especially the trousers of red which every bride must wear in those parts. So was the marriage day set and it drew on, and dawned at last, a clear cold day in the winter of that year.

Now was it a strange day for this mother when she must welcome to her house a new and younger woman, so long had she been master there as well as mistress. When she was dressed in her best and stood waiting at her door, when she saw the red bridal chair come near with its burden of the bride within, it seemed suddenly but a little while ago when she herself had come in that same chair, and the old woman dead stood where she stood today and her own man where her son stood. Rarely did she think these days of that man of hers, and truly did he seem dead to her, but the strangest longing fell on her for him while she stood waiting. It was not the longing of the flesh; no, that was dead and gone now. It was some other longing, the longing for some completeness of her own age, for she felt alone.

She looked at her son newly, no longer only son to her, but husband to another now, and there he stood, very still, his head hung down, stiff in the new black robe she had made for him, and shoes upon his feet most often bare. He seemed unmoved, or so she thought until she saw his hanging hands trembling against the black of his robe. She sighed again then, and again she thought of her own man and how she had peeped out at him from behind the curtains of her chair and how her heart leaped to see how fair he was and how good a man to look on in every way. Yes, he had been prettier far than this son of hers was today, and she thought to herself now that he was the prettiest man she had ever seen.

But before she had time to grieve more than in this dim way the first of the procession came, the small wedding fruits, the cock she had sent to the bride’s house and that according to custom they sent back and with it a hen they mated to it, and after these few things, the chair was fetched and set down there before the door and the cousin’s wife and the gossip and the other elder women of the hamlet took the bride’s hand and tried to pull her forth. And she was proper and reluctant and came at last but most unwillingly, and when she did come she made her eyes downcast and did not look up once. Then the mother withdrew into her cousin’s house, as was the custom too in those parts where it was said a son’s wife must not see too easily her husband’s mother, lest she do not fear her thereafter, and all that day the mother stayed in the cousin’s house.

But still she stayed near the door to hear what people said of this new wife, and she heard some cry, “A very good and earnest-looking maid,” and some said, “They say she sews well, and if it is true she made those shoes she wears, she has ten good fingers, I swear!” And some among the women went up and fingered the red wedding robes and lifted the coat to see the inner ones, and all were well and neatly made, and the buttons hard and nicely turned of twisted cloth, and they ran and told the mother all, “A decent, able maid, goodwife, and with a proper look.” But some among the men spoke coarsely and one said, “Too thin and yellow for my taste, I swear!” and another called out, “Aye, but a few months will mend the thinness, brother—naught like a man to make a maid swell!”

And in all this merry, ribald talk the maid moved demurely to her new home and so was wed.

Now must the mother leave the bed where she had slept these many years, and when the daughter-in-law came to make the bed for the mother that night, for so it was done in those parts, she made the pallet where the old dead woman once had slept behind the curtains, and later the elder son; and the blind girl had a pallet of her own beside it, and the younger lad slept in the kitchen if he slept at home. Yes, upon the true bed the elder son slept now with his new wife.

It was not easy either for the mother to give up to this new pair that place which had been hers and her man’s, and it made her seem old to herself at night to lie on the old woman’s pallet. Through the day she could be usual, busy everywhere, commanding all, her tongue quick to correct and command, but at night she was old. Oftentimes she woke and it seemed to her it could not be she who lay there and the other pair upon the bed, and she thought to herself amazed, “Now I suppose that old soul who was mother when I came to this house felt as I do now, when I came a bride and pushed her from her bed and lay there with her son in my turn. And now another lies with my son.”

It seemed so strange, so endless, this turning of some hidden wheel, this passing on of link caught onto link in some never ending chain that she was dazed with thinking of it even dimly, since she was not one to think into the meanings of what passed before her, but only taking all that came for what it was. But she was lessened in her own eyes from that day on. Even though she was in name the oldest and the first and mistress over all, she was not first in her own eyes.

And she watched this son’s wife. She was dutiful and day after day she made her bow before her husband’s mother, until the mother grew weary and shouted at her, “Enough!” But the mother could not find any fault in her. Then was this very faultlessness a fault and the mother muttered, “Well, and doubtless she has some secret inner fault I do not see at once.”

For the son’s wife did not, as some maids do, set forth all that she was at once. She was diligent and she was smooth and quick at work and when the work was done she sat and sewed on something for her husband but all she did was done in her own careful way.

Now there are not two women in this world who do the same task alike, and this the mother had not known, thinking all did as she did. But no, this son’s wife had her own way of doing all. When she cooked the rice she put too much water in, or so the mother thought, and the rice came out softer than the mother was used or liked to have it. And she told the son’s wife so, but that one shut her pale lips smoothly and said, “But so I ever do it.” And she would not change.