She did all well, the mother thought unwillingly, except she bore no child. The mother sitting empty there looked restlessly about that threshold where once she had been wont to see her little children tumbling in their play, and all day long she sat and remembered the days gone, and how once she had sat so young and filled with life and work, her man there, her babes, she the young wife and another the old mother. Then her man was gone and never heard from — and she winced and turned her mind from that, and then she thought how empty it seemed now, the elder son in the field all day or bickering at harvest with the landlord’s agent, some new fellow, a little weazened cousin of the landlord’s, people said — she never looked at him — and her blind maid gone, and her younger son gone always in the town and seldom home.
Well, but there was her younger son, and as she sat she thought of him more often, for she loved him still the best of all her children. Into her emptiness he came now and then, and with his coming brought her only brightness. When he came she rose and came out of her bleakness and smiled to see his good looks. He was the fairest child she had, as like his father as a cockerel is like a cock who fathered him, and he came in at ease nowadays, and not fearing his elder brother as once he did, for he had some sort of work in town that brought him in a wage.
Now what this work was he never clearly said, except that it brought him in so well that sometimes he had a heap of money, and sometimes he had none, although he never showed this money to his brother, except in the good clothes he wore. But there were times when he was free and filled with some excitement and then he pressed a bit of silver into his mother’s hand secretly and said, “Take it, mother, and use it for yourself.”
Then the mother took the silver and praised the lad and loved him, for the elder son never thought to put a bit of money in her hand; since he had been master he kept all his silver for his own. Well fed she always was and she ate heartily as she was able for she loved her food, and better than she had ever been she was with this son’s wife to clothe her and make all she needed, and even her burial garments were made and ready for her, though she did not think to die yet for a long time. Anything she asked for they let her have, a pipe to comfort her, and good shredded tobacco and a sup of yellow wine made hot. But they did not think to put a bit of silver in her hand and say, “Use it for any little thing you wish,” and she knew if she had asked for it the son and his wife would look at each other and say, one or the other of them, “But what would you buy — do we not give you everything?” So when the younger son brought her the bit of silver she loved him for it more than all else the other two did for her, and she kept it in her bosom and when the night came she rose and hid it in the hole.
But still he was not often where she could see him and there upon the empty threshing-floor the two women sat, mother and son’s wife, and to the mother it seemed all the house was full of emptiness. She sat and sighed and smoked her pipe and all she had to do these days was to think of her life, or nearly all, for there was that one thing she would not think of willingly, and when she did it brought her blind maid to her mind and she never could be sure the two were not linked somehow in the hands of the gods. Sometimes she would have gone to some temple to seek a comfort of some sort, though what she did not know, but there was the old sin and it seemed late now to seek for forgiveness and she let it be and sighed and spoke of her blind maid sadly sometimes.
But if she did the son’s wife answered always sharply, “She does well, doubtless — a very lucky thing for all that you found one who would have her for his son.”
“Now she is a clever maid, too, daughter-in-law,” the mother said hotly. “You never would believe how much she could do, I know, but before you came she did much that when you came you would not let her do and so you never knew how well she did.”
“Aye, it may be so,” said the son’s wife, holding nearer to her eyes the cloth she sewed on to see if it were right. “But I am used to working on and finishing with what I do and a blind maid potters so.”
The mother sighed again and said, looking over the empty threshold, “I wish you would bear a babe, daughter. A house should have a child or two or three in it. I am not used to such an empty house as this. I wish my little son could wed if you are not to have a child, but he will not, somehow, for some reason.”
Now here was the young wife’s grief, that though she had been wed near upon five years she had no child yet and not a sign of one, and she had gone secretly to a temple to pray and had done all she knew and still her body stayed as barren as it had been. But she was too proud to show how grieved she was and now she said, calmly, “I will have sons in time, doubtless.”
“Aye, but it is time,” the mother said pettishly. “I never heard of any women in our hamlet who had not babes if they had husbands. Our men are fathers as soon as they mate themselves and the women always fertile — good seed, good soil. It must be you have some hidden illness in you somewhere to make you barren and unnatural. I made you those clothes full and big, and what use has it been!”
And to the cousin’s wife the mother complained, and she said, leaning to put her mouth against the other’s ear, “I know very well what is wrong — there are no heats in that son’s wife of mine. She is a pale and yellow thing and one day is like the next and there is never any good flush in her from within, and all your luck in cutting her wedding garments cannot prevail against her coldness.”
And the cousin’s wife nodded and laughed and said, “It is true enough that such pale and bloodless women are very slow to bear.” Then her little laughing eyes grew meaningful and she laughed again and said, “But not every woman can be so full of heats as you were in your time, good sister, and well you know it is not always a good thing in a woman!”
Then the mother answered hastily, “Oh, aye, I know that—” and fell silent for a time and then after a while she said unwillingly, “It is true she is a careful woman, clean and almost too clean and scraping out the pot so often I swear she wastes the food with so much washing of the oil jar and the like. And she washes herself every little time or so, and it may be this is why she goes barren. Too much washing is not always well.”
But she spoke no more of heats, for she feared to have the cousin’s wife bring up again that old ill done, although the cousin’s wife was the kindest soul and never all these years had made a difference of it, and if she had even told her man then the mother never knew she did. If it had not been for these two sorrows that she had, the blind maid and that her son had no sons, she might have forgotten it herself, so far away the days of her flesh seemed now. Yes, she might have forgotten it if she had not feared it had been sin and these two sorrows the punishment for it.
But there her life was, and the maid was blind and gone now and there was no child, and only the beasts about and the dog and even these she dared not feed.
There was only this good thing nowadays, she thought, and it was that her two sons did not quarrel so much. The elder was satisfied and master in the house, and the younger had his own place somewhere, and when he came home and went away again, the most the elder son did was to say with feeble scorn, “I wonder where my brother gets those good clothes he wears and what the work is that he does. I cannot wear clothes like his and I work bitterly. He seems to have money somehow. I hope he is not in some band of town thieves or something that will drag us into trouble if he is caught.”