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.
Thus it was with everything. This and that about the house she changed to her own liking, not quickly nor in any temper, but in a small, careful, gradual way, so that it gave the mother no handle to lay her anger on. There was another thing. The young wife did not like the smell of beasts at night, and made complaint, but not to the older woman, only to the man, until he set to work that same winter to add a room to the house where they could move the bed in and sleep alone. And the older woman looked on astonished at such new ways.
At first she said to the blind maid that she would not be angry with the son’s wife. And indeed it was not easy to be angry quickly, for the young wife did well and worked carefully, so that it was hard to say “this is wrong” or “you did not do that well.” But there were things the mother hated somehow, though most she loathed the softened rice and of it she grumbled often and at last aloud, “I never do feel full and fed with such soft stuff. There is naught to set my teeth down on — this watery stuff, it passes my belly like a wind and does not lie like firm good food.” And when she saw her son’s wife pay no heed to this she went secretly to her son one day where he worked in the field and there she said, “Son, why do you not bid her cook the rice more dry and hard? I thought you used to like it so.”
The son stopped his labor then and stayed himself a moment on his hoe and said in his calm way, “I like it as she does it very well.”
Then the mother felt her anger rise and she said, “You did not use to like it so and it means you have joined yourself to her instead of me. It is shameful that you like her so and go against your mother.”
Then the red came flooding into the young man’s face and he said simply, “Aye, I like her well enough,” and fell to his hoe again.
From that day on the mother knew the two were masters in the house. The eldest son was not less kind than usual and he did his work well and took the money into his own hand. It was true he did not spend it, nor did his wife, for the two were a saving pair, but they were man and wife and this their house and land, and to them the mother was but the old woman in the house. It was true that if she spoke of field or seed and of all the labor that she knew so well because it had been hers, they let her speak, but yet when she had finished it was as though she had not spoken, and they made their plans and carried all on as they liked. It seemed to her she was nothing any more, her wisdom less than nothing in the house that had been hers.
Very bitter was it for anyone to bear and when the new room was made and the pair moved into it, the mother muttered to the blind girl who slept beside her, “I never saw such finicking as this, as though the honest smell of beasts was poison! I do swear they made that room so they could be away from us and talk their plans we cannot hear. They never tell me anything. It is not the beasts — it is that your brother loves her shamefully. Yes, they care nothing for you or for your little brother, nor even for me, I know.” And when the girl did not answer she said, “Do you not think so, too, my maid? Am I not right?”
Then the maid hesitated and she said after a while out of the darkness, “Mother, it is true I have something to say I would say and yet I would not, lest it grieve you.”
Then the mother cried out, “Say on, child. I am used to grief, I think.”
And then the maid asked in a small sad voice, “Mother, what will you do with me, blind as I am?”
Now all this time the mother had not thought otherwise than that this maid would live on here with her a while at least and she said in surprise, “What do you mean, my maid?”
And the maid said, “I do not mean my brother’s wife is not kind — she is not cruel, mother. But I think she does not dream you will not wed me soon. I heard her ask my little brother but the other day where I was betrothed, and when he said I was not she said surprised, ‘A great maid to be without a mother-in-law still.’ ”
“But you are blind, child,” said the mother, “and it is not so easy to wed a blind maid.”
“I know it,” said the maid gently. And after a while she spoke again, and this time as though her mouth were very dry and as though her breath came hot. “But you know there are many things I can do, mother, and there may be some very poor man, a widower, perhaps, or some such poor man who would be glad of the little I could do if he need pay nothing for me, and then would I be in my own house and there would be someone if you were gone whom I could care for. Mother, I do not think my sister wants me.”
But the mother answered violently, “Child, I will not have you go to mend some man’s house like that! We are poor, I know, but you can be fed. Widowers are often the hardest and lustiest husbands, child. So go to sleep and think no more of this. Hearty I am yet and likely to live a long full time yet, and your brother was never cruel to you, even as a child.”
“He was not wed then, mother,” said the girl, sighing. But she stayed silent then and seemed to sleep.
But the mother could not sleep a while, although on usual nights she slept deep and sound. She lay there thinking hard, and taking up the days past, one by one, to see if what the girl had said was true, and though she could not think of any single thing, it seemed to her the son’s wife was not warm. No, she was not very warm to the younger lad either, and at least not warm to this blind sister in her husband’s house, and here was new bitterness for the mother to bear.
XV
EVERY DAY THE MOTHER watched to see if what the girl had said was true, and it was true. The young wife was not rude, and her words came from her smoothly and with seeming careful courtesy always. But she put upon the maid a hundred little pricks. She gave the blind maid less than her full bowl of food, or so it seemed in the mother’s eyes, and if there were some dainty on the table she did not give her any, and the blind maid, not seeing, did not know it was there. And indeed they would all have let it pass, not heeding in their own hunger, had not the mother’s eyes been sharpened, and she cried out, “Daughter, do you not like this dish of pig’s lungs we have cooked in soup today?”
And when the maid answered gently in surprise, “I did not know we had it, mother, and I like it very well,” then the mother would reach over and with her own spoon dip the meat and soup into the maid’s bowl, and be sure the son’s wife saw the mother do it, and she answered smoothly and courteously, scarcely moving her pale lips that with all their paleness were too thick, too, and she said, “I beg your pardon, sister — I did not see you had none.” But the mother knew she lied.