Then the pedlar dropped his voice low and coaxing and he held the cloth near the child, but not too near either, careful lest some soil come on it if it were not bought, and he said half whispering, “Such cloth — such strength — such color — I have had many a piece pass through my hands, but never such a piece as this. If I had a son of my own I would have saved it out for him, but I have only a poor barren wife who gives me no child at all, and why should the cloth be wasted on such as she?”
The old woman listened to this tale and when she heard him say his wife was barren she was vastly diverted and she cried out, “A pity, too, and you so good a man! And why do you not take a little wife, good man, and try again and see what you can do? I ever say a man must try three women before he knows the fault is his—”
But the mother did not hear. She sat musing and unsure, and her heart grew weaker still, for she looked down at her child and he was so beautiful with this fine new stuff against his soft golden skin and his red cheeks that she yielded and said, “What is your least price, then, for more I cannot pay?”
Then the pedlar named a sum, and it was not too high and not as high as she had feared, and her heart leaped secretly. But she shook her head and looked grave and named half the sum, as the custom was in bargaining in those parts. This was so little that the pedlar took the cloth back quickly and put it in its place and made to go away again, and then the mother, remembering her fair child, called out a sum a little more, and so haggling back and forth and after many false starts away the pedlar made, he threw down his pack again and pulled forth the bit, agreeing at last to somewhat less than he had asked, and so the mother rose to fetch the money from the cranny in the earthen wall where it was kept.
Now all this time the man sat idly by, singing, and his high voice made soft and small and stopping sometimes to sup down his hot water that he drank always after he had eaten, and he took no part in this bargain. But the pedlar being a very clever fellow and eager to turn to his account every passing moment, took care to spread out seemingly in carelessness a piece of grass cloth that he had, and it was that cloth made of wild flax which cools the flesh upon a hot day in summer, and in color it was like the sky, as clear, as blue. Then the pedlar glanced secretly at the man to see if the man saw it, and he said half laughing, “Have you bought a robe for yourself yet this summer? For if you have not, I have it for you here, and at a price I swear is cheaper than it can be bought in any shop in town.”
But the man shook his head and a dark look came down upon his idle, pretty face, and he said with bitterness, “I have nothing wherewith to buy myself anything in this house. Work I have and nothing else, and all I gain for it is more to feed, the more I work.”
Now the pedlar had passed through many a town and countryside and it was his trade to know men’s faces and he saw at a glance that this man was one who loved his pleasure, and that he was like a lad held down to life he was not ready for, and so he said in seeming kindliness and pity, “It is true that I can see you have a very hard life and little gain, and from your fine looks I see it is too hard a life. But if you buy yourself a new robe you will find it like a very potent new medicine to put pleasure in your heart. There is nothing like a new summer robe to put joy in a man, and with that ring upon your finger shined and cleaned and your hair smoothed with a bit of oil and this new robe upon you, I swear I could not see a prettier man even in a town.”
Now the man heard this and it pleased him and he laughed aloud half sheepishly, and then he remembered himself and said, “And why should I not for once have a new robe for myself? There is nothing ahead but one after another of these young ones, and am I forever to wear my old rags?” And he stooped swiftly and fingered the good stuff in his fingers and while he looked at it the old mother was excited by the thought and she cried, “It is a very fair piece, my son, and if you must have a robe then this is as pretty a blue robe as ever I did see, and I remember once your father had such a robe — was it when we were wed? But no, I was wed in winter, yes, in winter, for I sneezed so at the wedding and the men laughed to see a bride sneezing so—”
But the man asked suddenly and roughly, “How much will it be for a robe?”
Now when the pedlar said the price, at that moment the mother came forth with the money in her hand counted and exact to the last penny and she cried out alarmed, “We can spend no more!”
At that cry of hers some desire hardened in the man and he said willfully, “But I will have myself a robe cut from this piece and I like it very well so that I will have it for the once! There are those three silver pieces I know we have.”
Now those three coins were of good value and coins the mother had brought with her when she came to be wed, and her own mother had handed them to her for her own when she left her home. They were her precious possession and she had never found the hour when she could spend them. Even when she had bought the coffin for the old mother when they thought her dying, she had pinched and borrowed and would not spend her own, and often the thought of those three silver pieces was in her mind for safe riches, and they were there if ever times grew too hard, some war or hardship that might come at any hour and lose them the fruits of their land. With those three coins in the wall she knew they could not starve for a while. So now she cried, “That silver we cannot spend!”
But the man leaped up as swift as a swallow and darted past her in a fury and he went to that cranny and searched in it and seized the silver. Yet the woman was after him, too, and she caught him and held him and hung to him as he ran. But she was not quick enough and never quick enough for his litheness. He threw her aside so that she fell upon the earthen floor, and the child still in her arms, and he ran out shouting as he ran, “Cut me off twelve feet of it and the foot and more to spare that is the custom!”
This the pedlar made haste to do, and he took the silver coins quickly, although indeed they were somewhat less than he had asked, but he was anxious to be away and yet have his stuff sold, too. When the mother came out at last the pedlar was gone and the man stood in the green shade of the tree, the blue stuff bright and new in his two hands, and her silver gone. The old woman sat afraid and when she saw the mother come she began in haste to speak of this or that in a loud creaky voice, “A very pretty blue, my son, and not dear, and a long summer since you had a grass cloth—”
But the man looked blackly at the woman, his face dark and red, and he roared at her, still bold with his anger, “Will you make it, then, or shall I take it to some woman and pay her to make it and tell her my wife will not?”
But the mother said nothing. She sat down again upon her little stool and she sat silent at first, pale and shaken with her fall, and the child she held still screamed in fright. But she paid no heed to him. She set him on the ground to scream, and twisted up afresh the knot of her loosened hair. She panted for a while and swallowed once or twice and at last she said, not looking at the man, “Give it to me then. I will make it.”
She was ashamed to have another do it and know the quarrel more than they did now, watching from their doors when they heard the angry cries.
But from that day on the woman harbored this hour against the man. Even while she cut the cloth and shaped it, and she did it well and the best she knew to do, for it was good stuff and worth good care, still she took no pleasure in the work and while she made the robe she stayed hard and silent with the man, and she said no small and easy thing about the day or what had happened in the street or any little thing such as contented women say about a house. And because she was hard with him in these small ways the man was sullen and he did not sing and as soon as he had eaten he went away to the wayside inn and he sat there among the men and drank his tea and gambled far into the night, so that he must needs sleep late the next day. When he did so in usual times she would scold him and keep him miserable until he gave over for peace’s sake, but now she let him sleep and she went alone to the fields, hard and silent against him whatever he might do, though her heart was dreary, too, while she kept it hard.