The Mother

by Pearl S. Buck

  But the mother answered nothing. What need to answer anything? Her maid was dead.

  XVII

  CRAZED WITH HER WEARINESS was the mother when she came down from the halting gray ass that night before her own door. She had wept all the way home, now aloud and now softly, and the young man had been beside himself again and again with his mother’s weeping. He cried out in an agony at last, “Cease your wailing, mother, or I shall not be able to bear it!”

  But when she calmed herself a little for his sake she broke forth again and at last the young man ground his teeth together and he muttered wildly, “If the day were come, if we were not so miserably poor, if the poor were given their share and could defend themselves, then might we sue for my sister’s life! But what use when we are so poor and there is no justice in the land?”

  And the mother sobbed out, “It is true there is no use in going to law since we have no money to pay our way in to justice,” and then she wept afresh and cried, “But all the money and the justice under heaven would not bring my blind maid back again.”

  At last the young man wept too, not so much for his sister nor even for his mother, but because he was so footsore and so worn and his world awry.

  Thus they came at last to their own door and when she was down from the ass the mother called her elder son piercingly and so sharply that he came running out and she cried, “Son, your sister is dead!” And while he stared at her scarcely comprehending, she poured out the tale, and at the sound of her voice others came quickly to hear the tale until there in the dusk of night nearly all the hamlet stood to hear it. The younger son stood there half fainting, leaning on the ass, and when his mother talked on he went and threw himself upon the ground and lay there dazed with what had come about this day, and he lay silent while his mother wept and cried aloud and in her weeping said, looking with her streaming eyes to this face and to that, “There my little maid was, dead and gone, and I hate myself I ever let her go, and I would not have let her go if it had not been for this cold-hearted son’s wife of mine who begrudged the little maid a bit of meat and a little flower on her shoe and so I was fearful if I died and the maid was afraid, too—a little tender child who never would have left me of her own will! What cared she for man or marriage and a child’s heart in her always, clinging to her home and me? Oh, son, it is your wife who has brought this on me—I curse the day she came and no wonder she is childless with so hard a heart!”

  So on and on the mother cried and at first they all listened in silence or exclaiming something when they had pieced the tale from what she said between her weeping, and then they tried to comfort her, but she would not let herself be comforted. The eldest son said nothing but stood with downcast head until she cursed his wife and spoke against her child-bearing, and then he said in a reasonable and quiet voice, “No, mother, she did not bid you send my sister to that place. You sent her so quickly and did not say a word to anyone but fixed it so and we wondered even that you did not go and see how it was there for yourself,” and he turned to his father’s cousin and he said, “Did you not think so, cousin? Do you remember how I said we were surprised my mother was so quick in the matter?”

  And the cousin turned his eyes away and muttered unwillingly, chewing a bit of straw, “Oh, aye, a little quick,” and his wife who stood holding a grandchild in her arms said mournfully to the mother, “Yes, it is true, sister, you be a very quick woman always, and never asking anyone if this or that is well to be done. No, before any of us know it or guess what it is you are about you have done all and it is finished, and you only want us to say you have done well. It is your nature all your life to be like this.”

  But the mother could not bear blame this night and she cried out in anger, and so turned her working angry face upon her cousin’s wife, “You—you are used to that slow man of yours, and if we must be all judged too quick by such as he—”

  And it looked for a time as though these two women who had been friends all their lives would fall to bitter words now, except that the cousin was so good and peaceable a man that when he saw his wife’s great face grow red and that she was gathering up her wits to make a very biting answer he called out, “Let be, mother of my sons! She is sore with sorrow tonight and well beside herself.” And after he had chewed a while upon his straw, he added mildly, “It is true that I am a very slow man and I have heard it many times since I was born, and you have told me so, too, mother of my sons. … Aye, I be slow.” And he looked around upon his neighbors and one called out earnestly, “Aye, goodman, you are a very slow-moving man for sure, and slow in wits and slow to speak!”

  “Aye,” said the cousin sighing a little and spitting out the shattered straw he chewed and plucking out a fresh one from the stack of rice straw near which he stood.

  So was the quarrel averted. But the mother was not eased and suddenly her eye fell on the old gossip standing in the crowd, her mouth ajar and eyes staring and all her old hanging face listening to what went on. Seeing her the mother’s anger and pain broke out afresh and it all came out mingled with her agony and she rushed at the gossip and fell on her and tore at her large fat face and snatched at her hair and screamed at her and said, “Yes, and you knew what those folk were and you knew the son was witless, and you never said a word of it but told a tale of how they were plain country folk like us, and you never said my maid must go up and down that rocky path to fetch water for them all—it is all on you and I swear I shall not rest myself until I have made you pay for it somehow—”

  And she belabored the gossip who was no match for the distraught mother even at the best of times and there is no knowing how it might have come about at the end if the son had not flown to part them and if the younger son had not risen too and with his elder brother held their mother so that the old gossip could make haste away, although she must needs stand, too, for honor’s sake when she had gone a distance and far enough so there were those who stood between them, and then she stopped and cried, “Yes, but your maid was blind and what proper man would have her? I did you a very good turn, goodwife, and here be all the thanks I get for it.” And she beat her own breast and pointed to the scratches on her face and fell to weeping and working herself up for a better quarrel.

  But the crowd hastened her away, and the sons urged the mother into the house and they forced her gently in and led her there, she weeping still. But she was spent at last and let them lead her to her room, and when she was come and they had sat her down, the son’s wife fetched her a bowl of water very hot and soothing and she had been heating it while the quarrel went on. Now she dipped a towel in it and wiped the mother’s face and hands and poured hot tea out and set food ready.

  Then little by little the mother let herself be calmed and she wept more silently and sighed a while and drank a little tea and supped her food and at last she looked about and said, “Where is my little son?”

  The young man came forward then and she saw how deathly pale he was and weary and all his merry looks gone for the time, and she pressed him down beside her on the bench and held his hand and urged him to eat and rest himself and she said, “Sleep here beside me tonight, my little son, and on the pallet where your sister used to lie. I cannot have it empty this night, my son.” And so the lad did and he slept heavily the moment that he laid himself down.

  But even when the house was quiet the mother could not sleep for long. She was spent to her core, her body spent with the long ride and all her heart’s weariness, and the only thing that comforted her was to hear the lad’s deep breathing as he lay there. And she thought of him then with new love and thought, “I must do more for him. He is the last I have. I must wed him and we will build a new room on the house. He shall have a room for himself and his woman, and then when children come—yes, I must find a good, lusty wife for him so that somehow we shall have children in the house.”

  And this thought of little children yet to come was the only comfort she could see in her whole life ahead of her.
r />   But doubtless even this comfort might not have lasted except that her old flux laid hold on her again and made her weak as death, too weak to mourn. She lay there on her bed for many days, purged body and heart, and all her sorrow and her comfort too in abeyance because she was not strong enough to mourn or hope. Many there were who came to exhort her, her neighbors and her cousin’s wife and they said, “Goodwife, after all the child was blind,” and they said, “Goodwife, what heaven has made for us we cannot change and it is useless to mourn for anything in this life.” And they said, “Remember your good sons,” and one day when the cousin’s wife said this the mother answered faintly, “Yes, but my elder son’s wife she does not bear, and my younger son he will not wed.” And the cousin’s wife answered heartily, “Give the elder son’s wife a year or two, cousin, for sometimes when seven years are passed barren, a woman will come to her true nature and bear a harvest of good children, for I have seen it so, and as for the lad’s saying he will not wed, why then he has a love somewhere, and we must find out who she is, and if she is fit for him to wed or not. Yes, truly has he found a love, as young folks will these days, for never was there a man in all the world, I swear, who would not wed!”

  But the mother whispered, “Bend down your ear, sister, and put it against my lips,” and when the cousin’s wife had done this the mother whispered, “Since sorrow follows me and everything goes wrong with me, I fear sometimes it is that old sin of mine that the gods know about—perhaps heaven will not give me grandsons!” And when she thought of this she closed her eyes and two great tears came out from under her closed lids. She thought of all her sins, not only the one the cousin’s wife knew of, but all the many times she had said she was widow and the letters that she wrote and all the lies. Not that she held the lies pure sin, since all must lie a little now and then for honor’s sake, but here the sin was, that she had lied and said her man was dead. Almost was it now when she thought of it as if she had put her hand forth and brought his death on him, and she had used this lie of death to hope another man would have her. So all these sins of hers, so old she could forget them many days together when she was well, came back fresh and now when she was weak and sorrowful, the heavier because she could not tell them all but must carry them in herself, and heaviest because she was a woman held in good repute among her fellows.

  She grew so low in mind that nothing cheered her much except to have her younger son about her. Yes, although the elder son’s wife tended her most carefully and brought her food ready and hot when she would have it and even walked a mile or two to another village to fetch a certain sort of 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 the land is made common and no one may have it for his own.”

  The mother understood no word of this except the first and she said plaintively, “Aye, I do think, too, your brother is over proud sometimes, and his wife barren, too.”

  For everything this younger son said seemed wise to the mother, now she clung to him so fast. To her when he came home it made a festival, and she would have made each day that he was there a holiday if she could have done it and would have killed a fowl for him and made better food than usual. But this she could not do. The fowls were her elder son’s now, an
d she could not do better than to steal an egg or two from some nest she found and keep them for her younger son, and when he came pour them into boiling water secretly for him to sup and add to the dish a little sugar that she had saved somehow.

  It came to be that whenever any little dainty fell to her or if she went into a house in the hamlet for a visit with a neighbor, since she was so idle now in her age and nothing she must do, and if someone gave her a peach or a dried persimmon or a little cake or some such thing for kindness, she saved it for her younger son. Much time she spent in watching these small bits to see they did not mold, and she kept them as long as she could, and when he put off coming home and she was forced to eat them lest they spoil she felt it no pleasure and scarcely could she enjoy the dainty, although she loved food, too. Often would she open the drawer she kept them in and turn the little store over with her fingers and think to herself, “He does not come. He is not here. If I had a little grandson I could give them to him when my son does not come. I have no one, if my son does not come.”

  And many hours of each day she sat and looked down the road to catch a glimpse of him as he came and when she saw the glint of a man’s robe she would run forward as best she could and when she saw it was her son come home she took his warm smooth hand in her old dry one and she pulled him into her own room and poured out for him the tea the careful son’s wife kept there for her and then with pleasure would she bring out the little store she had for him. And she sat down and watched him lovingly while he picked about among the bits and chose the best. Sometimes he turned his dainty nose aside and said, “That cake is mildewed, mother,” or he said, “I never liked a rice flour cake so dry.”