Scarcely had she set the food to boiling when the maid cried out from where she sat upon the threshold that she heard her little brother weeping, and when the mother ran out of the kitchen it was so and she ran to the harvest field and there upon the reaped grain the elder son was beating the younger one most mercilessly with the handle of his scythe, and the younger one was howling and striking back with his two fists and struggling to loose himself from his brother’s hard grasp about his neck. But the elder brother held him fast and beat him with the dull end of the handle. Then the mother ran with all her strength and clung to the angry elder son and begged of him, “Oh, my son, a little lad he is yet — Oh, son. Oh, son!”
And as she clung like this the younger slipped out from the elder’s hand and ran swift as a young hare across the field and disappeared into the dusk. There were these two left, the mother and her bitter elder son. Then she faltered, “He is such a child yet, son, only fourteen and with his mind still on play.”
But the young man replied, “Was I child at fourteen? Did I play at harvest time when I was fourteen and needed I to have you bribe me with a ring and a new robe and this and that I had not earned?”
Then she knew the silly younger lad had boasted of what he would have and she stood speechless, caught in her fault, staring at her son and silent, and he went on and cried, his bitterness bursting from him, “Yes, you keep the money, and I give you all we earn. I never take a penny for my own, not even to smoke a little pipe of any kind or take a bowl of wine or buy myself anything a young man might have and count it but his due. Yet you must promise him all I never had! And for what? To do the labor that he ought to do for nothing and to pay for what he eats and wears!”
“I did not promise rings and robes,” she said in a low and troubled voice, half afraid of this angry son of hers who was so grave and quiet on other days that she did not know him now.
“You did!” he said most passionately. “Or if not that, then worse, for he said he was to have what he wanted when the harvest money was in and taxes paid. He said you promised!”
“I meant some small toy or other, costing but a penny or so,” she answered, shamed before this good son of hers. And then plucking up her courage — for was he not her son still? — she added, “And if I did promise a little toy it was but to save him from your angers on him always, whatever he may do, so that you keep him down with all your cruel looks and words — and now blows!”
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,