Sometimes the man gamed a while with such a traveler and ever the traveler was astonished at so skilled a gamester as he in this small country hamlet, and would cry, “Good fellow, you play as lucky as a city man, I swear, and you could play in any city pleasure house!”
The man smiled to hear this, then, and he said earnestly, “Do you think I could in truth?” and he would say in his own heart with scorn and longing, “It is true there is not one in this little dull place who dares play with me any more, and even in the town I hold my own against the townsmen.”
When he thought of this more than ever did he long exceedingly to leave this life of his upon the land he hated and often he muttered to himself as his hoe rose and fell lagging over the clods, “Here I be, young and pretty and with my luck all in my fingers, and here I be, stuck like a fish in a well. All I can see is this round sky over my head and the same sky in rain or shine, and in my house the same woman and one child after another and all alike weeping and brawling and wanting to be fed. Why should I wear my good body to the bone to feed them and never find any merry thing at all for me in my own life?”
And indeed, when the mother had conceived and borne this last son he was even sullen and angered against her because she bore so easily and so quickly after the last birth, although very well he knew this is a thing for which a wife should be praised and not blamed, and he might complain with justice only if she were barren, but never if she bore in her due season every year and sons more often than not.
But in these days justice was not in him. He was but a lad still in some ways, and younger by some two years than his wife was, as the custom was in those parts, where it was held fitting for a man to be younger than his wife, and his heart rose hot and high within him and it was nothing to him that he was the father of sons, seeing that he longed for pleasure and strange sights and any idle joy that he could find in some city far away.
And indeed he was such a one as heaven had shaped for joy. He was well formed and not tall, but strong and slight and full of grace, his bones small and exquisite. He had a pretty face, too, his eyes bright and black and full of laughter at what time he was not sullen over something else, and when he was in good company he could always sing a new song of some kind and he had a quick and witty tongue, and he could say a thing seeming simple but full of wit and hidden coarseness such as the countrymen loved. He could set a whole crowd laughing with his songs and wit, and men and women too liked him very well. When he heard them laugh his heart leaped with pleasure in this power he had, and when he came home again and saw his wife’s grave face and sturdy body it seemed to him that only she did not know him for the fine man he truly was, for only she never praised him. It was true he made no joke in his own house and he was seldom merry even with his own children. He was such a one as seemed to save all his good humor and his merry, lovable looks for strangers and for those who were not of his own house.
And the woman knew this, too, so that half it angered her and half it was a pain when other women cried, “That man of yours, I do declare his tongue is good as any play, and his quick merry looks—”
And she would answer quietly, “Aye, a very merry man, truly,” and would talk then of other things to hide her pain, because she loved him secretly. And she knew he was never merry when he was with her.
Now it happened that in the new summer time when the mother had borne her fourth child, the most evil quarrel that ever was between the man and woman came to pass. It was on a day in the sixth month of the year and it was early summer and it was such a day in that summer as might set any man to dreaming of new joy, and so that man had dreamed the whole morning long. The air was so full of languor and soft warmth, the leaves and grass so newly green, and the sky so bright and deep a blue that scarcely could he work at all. He could not sleep, either, for that day was too full of life for sleep, and the great heat not yet come. Even the birds made continual songs and chirping and there was a sweet wind, teasing and blowing now this fragrance and that down from the hill where yellow fragrant lilies bloomed and wild wisteria hung in pale purple wreaths. The wind blew against the sky, too, and shifted the great billowing clouds as white as snow, and they floated across the bright sky and set the hills and valley in such vivid light and darkness as are seldom seen, so that now it was bright and now shadowy, and there was no repose in the day. It was a day too merry for work, and very disturbing to the heart of any man.
In the noontime of that bright day it happened that a pedlar of summer stuffs came through the countryside, and he carried on his shoulder a great heap of his stuffs, of every hue and shade, and some were flowered, and as he went he called, “Cloth — good cloth for sale!”
When he came to this house where the man and the woman and the old mother and the little children sat in the shade of their willow tree and ate their noon meal he halted and cried, “Shall I stay, goodwife, and show you my stuffs?”
But the mother called back, “We have no money to buy, unless it be a foot of some common cheap stuff for this new son of mine. We be but poor farmer folk and not able to buy new clothes nor much of any stuffs except such as must be had to keep us from bareness!”
And the old woman, who must always put in her bit, cried in her little old shrill voice, “Aye, it is true what my daughter-in-law says, and the stuffs be very poor these days and washed to shreds in a time or two, and I mind when I was young I wore my grandmother’s coat and it was good till I was married and needing something new but still only for pride’s sake, for the coat was good enough still, but here I be in my second shroud and nearly ready for a third, the stuffs be so poor and weak these days—”
Then the pedlar came near, scenting sale, and he was a man with very pleasant and courteous coaxing ways such as pedlars have, and he humored the mother and had a good kindly word for the old woman, too, and he said to her, “Old mother, here I have a bit of cloth as good as any the ancients had and good enough even for that new grandson you have — goodwife, it is a bit left from a large piece that a rich lady bought in a great village I went through today, and she bought it for her only son. Of her I did ask the honest price seeing she cut from a whole piece, but since there is only this bit left, I will all but give it to you, goodwife, in honor of the fine new son you have there at your breast.”
So saying these words smoothly and as though all in one flowing breath, the pedlar drew from out his pack a very pretty end of cloth, and it was as he said, flowered with great red peonies upon a grass-green ground.
The old woman cried out with pleasure because her dim eyes could see its hues so clear and bright, and the mother loved it when she saw it. She looked down then at the babe upon her breast, naked except for a bit of old rag about its belly, and it was true he was a fat and handsome child, the prettiest of her three, and like the father, and he would look most beautiful in that bit of flowery stuff. So it seemed to the mother and she felt her heart grow weak in her and she said unwillingly, “How much is that bit then? But still I cannot buy it for we have scarcely enough to feed these children and this old soul and pay the landlord too. We cannot buy such stuffs as rich women put upon their only sons.”
The old woman looked very doleful at this, and the little girl had slipped from her place and went to peer at the bright cloth, putting her dim eyes near to see it. Only the elder lad ate on, caring nothing, and the man sat idly, singing a little, careless of this bit of stuff for no one but a child.