The Mother

And some dim, dying merriment came on the old woman’s owlish sunken face and she gasped once more, “I will not die till it is made and on—”

In greatest haste then was the stuff bought, and the cousin went to buy it and the mother told him, “Buy the very best you can of stout red cotton stuff and tomorrow I will pay you if you have the silver by you now.” For she had determined that the old woman would have the very best, and that night when the house was still she dug into the earth and got the silver out that she had hid there and she took out what was needful to send the old mother to her death content.

And indeed, it seemed as if the thing she would not think of now, the memory of an hour she drove into her secret places, busying herself and glad to be so busy, it seemed as if this waiting memory made her kind and eager to be spent for these who were hers. Somehow it eased her of that secret hour to do her scrupulous best now. For these two nights she slept none at all, wearying herself eagerly, nor was she ever angry at the children, and she was most gentle to the old and dying woman. When the cousin fetched the cloth she held it to the old dying eyes and she said, speaking loudly now, for the old woman grew deaf and blind more quickly every hour, “Hold hard, old mother, till I have it made!”

And the old soul said, bravely, “Aye — I will not die!” though she had not breath for any speech now and scarcely any breath at all, so that every one she drew came screeching through her lungs pitifully, very hard to draw.

Then the mother made haste with her needle, and she made the garments of the bright good stuff, red as a bride’s coat, and the old woman lay watching her, her dim eyes fixed upon the stuff where it glowed in the mother’s lap. She could not eat now or swallow any food or drink, not even the warm human milk one kindly woman milked from her own breast with a bowl, since sometimes this good milk will save an old dying man or woman. She clung but to this scanty bit of air, waiting.

And the mother sewed and sewed, and the neighbors brought in food so that she need not stop for anything but could sew on. In one day and a part of the night it was done, and the cousin and the cousin’s wife stood by to see it and a neighbor or two, and indeed the whole hamlet did not sleep, but stayed awake to wonder if the mother would win that race, or death.

But it was done at last, the scarlet burial robes were done, and the cousin lifted the old body and the mother and the cousin’s wife drew on the fine new garments on the old and withered limbs, brown now and dry as old sticks of some dead tree. But the old soul knew when it was finished. Speak she could not, but she lay and drew one last rattling breath or two, and opened wide her eyes and smiled her toothless smile, knowing she had lived through to her third shroud, which was her whole desire, and so she died triumphantly.

Yet when the burial day was over and the need for being busy was past, still the mother busied herself. She labored as she never had upon the land and when the lad would do a thing she had begun she cried roughly, “Let me do it — I miss the old mother sorely and more sorely than I thought I could, and I blame myself that I did not go home that day and see if she were warm when the storm came up and covered the sun.”

And she let it be thought through the hamlet that she sorrowed for the old woman gone, and blamed herself, and many praised her for her sorrow and said, “How good a daughter-in-law to mourn like this!” And they comforted her and said, “Do not mourn so, goodwife. She was very old and her life ended, and when the hour is come that has been set for each of us before ever we can walk or talk, then what need of mourning? You have your man alive yet, and you have your two sons. Take heart, goodwife.”

But it was an ease to her too to have every cause to cover up her fear and melancholy. For she had cause to be afraid, and she had time now, even while she worked upon her land, to take out of her heart that fear which had been hiding there ever since the hour in the rising storm. Glad she was all these days that she had been in such haste, glad even for the old woman’s death, and to herself she thought most heavily, “It is better that the old soul is dead and cannot know what is to come if it must come.”

One month passed and she was afraid. Two months passed and three and harvest came, the grain was threshed, and what had been fear beneath her labor day by day was now a certainty. There was no more to doubt and she knew the worst had befallen her, mother of sons, goodwife honored in her hamlet, and she cursed the day of the storm and her own foolish heats. Well she might have known that with her own body all hot and open and waiting as it had been, her mind all eaten up with one hunger, well she might have known it was such a moment as must bear fruit. And the man’s body, too, so strong and good and full of its own power — how had she ever dreamed it could be otherwise?

Here was strange motherhood now that must be so secret and watched with such dismay in the loneliness of the night while the children slept. And however she might be sickened she dared not show it. Strange it was that when she bore her proper children she was not sick at all, but now her food turned on her when she ate a mouthful. It was as though this seed in her was so strong and lusty that it grew like a foul weed in her, doing what it would with her body ruthlessly, and she could not let a sign of it be seen.

Night after night she sat up in her bed, too ill at ease to lie down, and she groaned within herself, “I wish I were alone again and had not this thing here in me — I wish I were alone again as I was, and I would be content—” and it came to her often and wildly that she would hang herself there upon the bedpost. But yet she could not. There were her own good children, and she looked upon their sleeping faces and she could not, and she could not bear to think of the neighbors’ looks on her dead body when they searched her for her cause of death. There was nothing then save that she must live on.

Yet in spite of all this pain the woman was not healed of her desire toward that townsman, though she often hated while she longed for him. Rather did it seem he held her fast now by this secret hold that grew within her. She had repented that she ever yielded to him and yet she yearned for him often day and night. In the midst of her true shame and all her wishing she had withstood him, she yearned for him still. Yet she was ashamed to seek him out, and fearful too lest she be seen, and she could only wait again until he came, because it seemed to her if she went and sought him then she was lost indeed, and after that stuff for any man to use.

But here was a strange thing. The man was finished with her. He came no more throughout that whole summer until the grain was reaped when he must come, and he came hard and quarrelsome as he used to be and he took his full measure of his grain so that the lad cried wondering, “How have we made him angry, mother, who was so kind to us last year?”

And the woman answered sullenly, “How can I know?” But she knew. When he would not look at her, she knew.

Not even on the day of harvest feasting would he look at her, although she washed herself freshly and combed her hair and smoothed it down with oil and put on a clean coat and trousers and her one pair of stockings and the shoes she had made for the old woman’s burial day. So garbed and her cheeks red with sick hope and shyness and her eyes bright with all her desperate secret fears, she hurried here and there busying herself before his eyes about the feast, and she spoke to this one and to that, forcing herself to be loud and merry. The women stared astonished at her flaming cheeks and glittering eyes and at her loud voice and laughter, she who used to be so quiet where men were.

But for all this the man did not look at her. He drank of the new wine made of rice and as he tasted it he cried loudly to the farmers, “I will have a jug or two of that for myself, if you can spare it, farmers, and set the clay seal on well and sound to keep it sweet.” But he never looked at her, or if she came before him his eyes passed over her as they might over any common country wife whose name he did not know.