The Mother: A Novel (9 page)

When she went down the street they all came crowding with her as she went, for the lad followed grinning and saying to all who asked that his father’s letter was come, and the little girl came after him, clinging to his coat, and since it was winter still and little to be done, the idle men and women followed, too, and they all crowded to the letter writer’s house, who was astonished at such a houseful coming in so suddenly. But when he heard what the matter was he took the letter and studied it a while and he turned it this way and that and stared at it, and at last he said gravely and as the first thing to be said, “It is from your husband.”

“That I guessed,” the mother said, and the gossip who was in the crowd called out, “And what other man would it be, good man?” And all the crowd roared with ready laughter.

Then the letter writer began to read the letter to her slowly and silence fell and the mother listened and the children and all the crowd, and at every word he paused to explain its full meaning, partly because it is true written and spoken words are not the same, but partly, too, to show how learned he was. And the mother listened as though she had never heard one word of it before, and she nodded at every word, and when he came to that place where it said there was money sent, the man raised his voice very loud and clear at such a serious thing, and those in the crowd gaped and cried out, “But was there money in it?” Then the woman nodded and she opened her hand and showed the paper piece into which she had changed her own silver, and she gave it to the letter writer to see, and he said hushed and solemnly, “It is true I see a ten, and it must be it is worth ten pieces of silver.”

Then all the crowd must see it and there was a picture of a fat whiskered general on the paper and when the gossip saw it she cried out aghast, “Why, goodwife, how your man is changed!” for she supposed it was a picture of the man himself, and none of them was sure it was not except the woman and she said, “It is not my man, I know.” And the letter writer guessed and said, “Doubtless it is his master.” And so they all looked at it again and cried how rich and fed he looked. Thus all the crowd were silent with wonder and with envy, and they watched while the mother folded the bit of precious paper into her hand and held it there closely.

So was the letter read and when the old man had finished it and folded it into its case again, he said gravely, “You are a very lucky wife and it is not every countrywoman whose man could go into a great city and find so good a place, or who if he did would send back his wage like that either, and so many places as I hear there are in towns to spend money in.”

Then all the crowd fell back in respect for her, and she walked proudly home, the children following her and sharing in their mother’s glory, and when the mother was come she told it all to the old mother and especially did the old soul laugh with pleasure to hear what her son said of the third shroud and she cried out in her trembling, cracking voice and struck her skinny knees with pleasure, “That son of mine! I do swear there was never one like him! And doubtless that town stuff is very fine good stuff.” Then she grew a trifle grave and she said wistfully, “Aye, daughter, if it be as good as he says, I doubt I can wear it out before I die. It may be that one will be my last shroud.”

The lad looked grave, too, when he saw his grandmother look so, and he cried loyally, “No, grandmother, it will not, for you have lasted two, and this one cannot be as strong as two!”

Then the old soul was cheered again and laughed to hear the boy so clever, and she said to the mother, “Very well you remembered all he said, daughter, and almost as if you read the words yourself.”

“Aye,” said the mother quietly, “I remembered every word.” And she went alone into the house and stood behind the door and wept silently, and the letter and even the bit of paper that was the same as silver were but ashes for all her pride. They were worthless for her when she was alone; there was no meaning in them then.

Nevertheless, the mother’s plot worked well enough and hereafter in the hamlet there was none who mocked at her or hinted she was a woman whose man had left her. Rather did she need to harden her heart toward them now, because since it was known she had the paper money and that there would come more next year like it, some came to borrow of her secretly, the old letter writer one, and besides him an idle man or two who sent his wife to ask for him, and the woman was hard put to it to refuse since all in the hamlet were some sort of kin and all surnamed Li, but she said this and that, and that she owed the money for a debt and that she had spent it already or some such thing. And some cried out at her when they talked together idly in a dooryard, and the gossip said before her meaningfully how much a bit of cloth cost these days and even a needle or two was costly and a few strands of silken thread to make a flower on a shoe for color, and they all took care to cry if she were there, “Well is it for such as you, and a very lucky destiny, that you have no need to think thrice over a penny, while your man is out earning silver and sending it to you and you have it over and above what is wrest from the bitter land!” And sometimes a man would call, “I doubt it is a good thing to have so rich a woman in our hamlet lest the robbers come. Aye, robbers come where riches are, as flies to any honey!”

It seemed to her at last that daily this bit of paper grew more troublesome, not only because of what the gossip said, and because this one and that one among the men would ask to see it close, but because she too was not used to money being of paper and she grew to hate the thing because she was ever afraid the wind might blow it away or the rats gnaw it or the children find it and think it nothing and tear it in play, and every day she must look to see if it were safe in the basket of stored rice where she kept it hid, because she was afraid it would mold in the earthen wall and rot away there. At last the thing grew such a burden on her that one day when she saw the cousin start for the town she ran to him and whispered, “Change me this bit of paper into hard silver, I pray, so that I can feel it in my hand, because this bit of paper seems nothing when I hold it.”

So the cousin took it and being a righteous honest man he changed it into silver, good and sound in every piece, and when he was back at her door again he struck each piece upon another to show how sound all were. The mother was grateful to him and she said, although half unwillingly too, except she did not wish to be thought small in mind, “Take a piece of it for your trouble, cousin, and for your help in harvest, for well I know you need it and your wife swelling with another child.”

But though he stared hard at the silver and sucked his breath in without knowing he did and blinked his eyes once or twice with longing he would not take it and he said quickly before his longing grew too much for him, because indeed he was a good and honest man, “No, cousin’s wife, for you are a lone woman and I am able to work yet.”

“Well, if you need to borrow then,” she said and quickly took the silver out of sight, for well she knew no man can look at silver long, however good he is, and not grow weak with longing.

In that night while the children and the old woman slept the mother rose and lit the candle and dug a hole with her hoe into the hard earth of the floor and there she hid the ten pieces of silver, but first she wrapped them in a bit of rag to keep the earth from them. The buffalo turned and stared with its great dull eyes, and the fowls woke under the bed and looked out at her with this eye and then with that and clucked faintly, astonished at this strange thing in the night. But the woman filled the hole and walked a while on it to make it beaten smooth and like the rest. Then she laid herself down again in the darkness.

It was the strangest thing, but as she lay there awake and yet half dreaming, almost she forgot it was her own silver she had buried and silver she gained from the harvest she had cut herself, bending her back in weariness to every handful of the grain. Yes, she forgot this, and it seemed to her almost that the man had truly sent it to her, and that it was a something over and beyond her own, and she murmured to her heart, “It is in place of the silver bits he took and spent for that blue gown, and better, for it is more,” and she forgave him for that thing he had done, and so she fell into sleep.

Thereafter when one asked to see the paper bit she answered tranquilly, “I have changed it for common silver and spent it,” and when the gossip heard it she cried out, her loose mouth ajar, “But have you spent it all?” the mother answered easily and she smiled, “Aye, I have spent it all for this and that, and a new pot or two and cloth and this and that, and why not when there is more to come?” And she went in the house and fetched out the new garments she had made for the man to wear if he came home and she said, “Here is some of the cloth such as I bought with it,” and they all stared at it and pinched the stuff and cried out that it was a very good strong cloth and the gossip said unwillingly, “You are a very good woman, I can swear, to spend the money, even to a share, upon clothes for him, and not all for yourself, or for the children.”

Then the mother answered steadfastly, “But we are well content with each other, my man and I, and I did spend some upon myself, for I gave some to a silversmith and bade him fashion me some earrings and a ring for my hand, for my man did ever say he wanted me to have them when we had something over and to spare.”

The old woman had listened to this all and now she cried out, “I swear my son is just such a man as she says, and he is to buy me my third shroud and of the best town stuff. A very good son, neighbors, and I wish as good a one to each of you, and especially to you, cousin’s wife, for I see your belly swollen as a ripe melon!”

Then the goodwives laughed and went away again, one by one, for it was evening time. But when they were gone the mother groaned within herself at such a great tale as she had told, and she reproached herself and said in her own heart, “Now why need I have told such a vast tale, and could not be content with what was told already? Where shall I find money for those trinkets? Yet must I somehow do it to save myself the truth.”

And she sighed to think of all the burden she had put upon herself.

O
NCE MORE THE SPRING
came on, and now the mother must set herself hard to the land and she pressed the boy into the labor, too, and she taught him how to drive the beast. Push the plough he could not, being so light and small, but he could run behind the beast and beat its thick slaty hide, and because its hide was so thick that all his strength could not pierce it, she fastened a sharp peg into a bamboo length and bade the boy beat with that to stir the beast out of its vast indolence.

The girl child, too, the mother pressed into small simple tasks, for the old woman grew more idle as she grew older, and forgetful so that all she remembered was to know if she were hungry or athirst. Only did she stir if the younger boy cried and wanted something in his lusty way, for the grandmother loved this youngest one. So the mother taught the girl to wash the noon’s rice at the pond, but she let her do it first before she set forth to the fields, lest the child with her half-seeing eyes fall into the pool and drown, and she taught her how to cook the rice, too, against their coming, though she was so small she scarce could reach the cauldron lid. She taught this little thing even to light the fire and keep it blazing, and this the little girl did very well, too, and she was patient when the smoke came out and flew into her eyes and smarted on the lids, and she did not complain at anything, for she understood that now the house was without the father, and the mother must do for them all. Nevertheless when the task was done she went into the house where it was dark even at noonday and there she sat and wiped her streaming eyes with a bit of old cloth she kept for this and she bore the pain as best she could.

The babe could walk, too, now that spring was come, for in the winter he had not tried, being burdened with his padded clothes so heavily that even though he fell he could not rise until someone passed by his way and set him right again. Now he ate what he would and thrived. But the mother let him suckle still because it gave her some vague comfort, although her breasts were well-nigh dry by now. Still it was a comfort to her in some dumb sweet way that the child clung to her breast and that he ran to meet her when he saw her coming home at night and cried to drink what little was there for him.

Thus the early spring came into full mild spring, and the mother labored hard with the boy beside her all day long, and the fields were ploughed somehow, if not so straight or deep as the man had ploughed them, for it had been what he had always done in springs past, while she sowed the seed. But beans were put in and young cabbage and the radishes to be sold at market, and soon the rape budded again and sent up its early heads and bloomed yellow and gold. So did she labor that well-nigh she forgot the man, she was so weary every night, and so dead in sleep she scarcely could rise again at dawn.

But there came a day when she remembered him.

Now the hour was come when the cousin’s wife was due to give birth and she sent a child to go and call the mother, who was her friend and nearest neighbor, and the child came to the field where the mother was working, the sweet spring wind blowing her loose coat as she worked and cooling her sweat as soon as it came.

The child was a young girl, and she called out, “Good aunt, my mother’s hour is come, and she says will you hasten, for you know how quick she is, and she sits ready and waiting for you to catch the babe!”

The mother straightened her bent back then and answered, “Aye, tell her I will come,” and she turned to the lad and said, “Take my hoe and weed these beans as best you can while I am gone. It will not be above an hour or so, if she is as quick as she always is.”

So saying she went across the fields and followed behind the girl who ran ahead, and as the woman walked it came over her in some new way how sweet a day this was. Living in this valley every day and laboring as she must, she never thought to lift her head to see what the world was about her, but her whole thought was on the land or in her house and her eyes bent to them always. But now she lifted her head as she walked and saw. The willows were full of tender leaves shining green, and the white blossoms of the pear trees were full blown this day and drifting in the winds, and here and there a pomegranate tree flamed scarlet in its early leaves. The wind, too, was very warm, and it came in sudden gusts and died again, and she did not know which was sweeter, the deep warm silence when the wind died and the smell of the earth came up from the ploughed fields, or the windy fragrance of the gusts. But walking thus in the silences and in the sudden winds, she felt her body strong and full and young, and a great new longing seized her for the man.