The Mother: A Novel (4 page)

On such days when all these thoughts pressed on him he was very surly and he spoke not at all to the woman except to curse her for some slowness, and when her quick temper rose against him it was a strange malicious pleasure to him to fall to loud quarreling with her, and it eased him somehow, although she had often the best of him, too, because her temper was more stout than his, except when she was angry at a child. Even to his anger he could not cling as long as she did, but grew weary of it and flung himself off to something else. Quickest of all would her anger rise if he struck one of the children or shouted at one if it cried. Then she could not bear it, and she flew against him if it were to save a child and ever the child was right and he was wrong, and this angered him more than anything, that she put the children before him, or he thought she did.

Yes, on days like this he held as nothing even the good few holidays he took, the feast days and the long idle winter days when he did nothing but sleep, and when he could not sleep he gambled. A lucky gambler he was, too, and he always came home with more than he took, and it seemed an easy way to live, if he were a lone man and had but himself to feed. He loved the chance of gambling and the excitement and the merriment of the game and all the men crowded together to see what lucky play he made. Truly luck was in his nimble fingers, which even the plough and the hoe had not made stiff, for he was young yet, only twenty and eight years of age, and he had never worked more than he must.

But the mother never knew what was in the heart of the father of her children. That he loved play she knew, but what matter that if he did not lose at play? It was in truth a pride to her that when other women complained aloud of their own men and how the scanty earnings of the land were lost at that table in the inn, she need not complain, and when one cried out to her, “If my poor wretch were but like that pretty man of yours, goodwife, his fingers are faery somehow, so that the money crawls to them of its own accord, seemingly, upon the gaming table—a very lucky woman be you, goodwife!” she smiled complacently and she did not often blame him for his play unless it served as excuse for some other cause of quarrel.

And she did not blame him deeply that he could not work steadily hour after hour in the fields as she did, though at the moment she might lay about him sharply with her tongue. She knew that men cannot work as women do, but have the hearts of children always in them, and she was used now to working on in her steady way while he flung down his hoe and laid himself upon the grass that grew on the footpath between this field and the next and slept an hour or two. But when she said aught to him in her scolding way, which was but the way, after all, her tongue was used to speak, for secretly she loved him well, he would answer, “Yes, and sleep I may for I have worked enough to feed myself.”

She might have said, “Have we not the children then and shall not each do what he is able to make more for them?” But this she did not say because it was true the children seemed ever hers and hers alone, since he did nothing for them. Besides, her tongue was not so adroit as his to find an answer.

But sometimes her wrath would come up hotly and then it would come with more than her usual scolding speech. Once or twice in a season a quarrel would go deep with her and give an unused bitterness to her tongue. When the man bought some foolish trinket in the market with the silver he had taken for the cabbage there, or when he was drunken on a day that was not a holiday, then she would grow angry and well-nigh she forgot she loved him in her heart. This was a deep fierce anger too, which smoldered and broke forth so many hours after his misdeed that the man had almost forgot what he had done, for it was his way to forget easily anything that did not please him, and when her anger came up in her like this she was helpless against it and it must out.

On such a day one autumn he came home with a gold ring on his finger, or one he said was gold, and when she saw it her anger came up and she cried in the strangest, hottest way, “You—and you will not take your share of our common bitterness of life! No, you must needs go and spend the scant bit we have for a silly ring to put upon your little finger! And whoever heard of a good and honest poor man who wore a ring upon his finger? A rich man, he may do it and nothing said, but if a poor man does it, has it any good meaning? Gold! Whoever heard of a gold ring bought for copper?”

At this he shouted at her, his face rebellious as a child’s, his red lips pouting, “It is gold, I tell you! It is stolen from some rich house, the man who sold it told me, and he showed it to me secretly upon the street as I passed, and he had it under his coat, and let me see it as I passed—”

But she sneered and said, “Yes, and what he saw was a silly countryman whom he could trick! And even though it were gold, what if it be seen upon your finger in the town some day and you be caught and thrown into a gaol for thief and then how will we buy you out again, or even feed you in the gaol? Give it to me and let me see if it be gold!”

But he would not give the toy to her. He shook himself sullenly as a child does and suddenly she could not bear him. No, she flew at him and scratched his smooth and pretty face and she beat him so heartily that he was aghast at her and he tore the ring from his finger scornfully but half frightened, too, and he cried, “There—take it! Very well I know you are angry because I bought it for my own finger and not for yours!”

At this she felt fresh anger, because when he spoke she was astonished to know he spoke the truth, and it was secret pain to her that he never bought any trinket to put into her ears or on her fingers as some men do for their wives, and this she did think of when she saw the ring. She stared at him and he said again, his voice breaking with pity for himself and his hard life, “You ever do begrudge me the smallest good thing for myself. No, all we have must go for those brats you breed!”

He began to weep then in good earnest and he went and flung himself upon the bed and lay there weeping and making the most of his weeping for her to hear, and his old mother who had heard the quarrel in greatest fright ran to him as best she could and coaxed him lest he be ill, and she cast hostile looks at the daughter-in-law whom commonly she loved well enough, and the children wept when they saw their father weep, and felt their mother hard and harsh.

But the mother was not cool yet. She picked up the ring from the dust where he had thrown it and put it between her teeth and bit on it, lest by any chance it might be the gold he said it was and a good bargain they could sell again for something. It was true that sometimes stolen things were cheaply sold, but scarcely, she thought, so cheaply as he said this was, although he might have lied, perhaps, in fear of her. But when she bit on it the thing would not give at all between her hard white teeth as it must if the gold were pure, and she cried out in new anger, “And if it were gold would it not be soft between my teeth? It is brass and hard—” she gnawed at it a while and spat the yellow shallow gold from out her mouth—“See, it has scarce been dipped even in the gold!”

She could not bear it then that the man had been so childishly deceived, and she went out from him to work upon the land, her heart hard so that she would not see the sobbing children nor would she hear the old mother’s quavering anxious voice that said, “When I was young I let my man be pleased—a wife should let her man be pleased with a little slight thing …” No, she would not hear anything to cool her anger down.

But after she had worked a while on the land the gentle autumn wind blew into her angry heart and cooled it without her knowing it. Drifting leaves and brown hillsides from which the green of summer had died away, the gray sky and the far cry of wild geese flying southward, the quiescent land and all the quiet melancholy of the falling year stole into her heart without her knowledge and made her kind again. And while her hand scattered the winter wheat into the soft and well-tilled soil, in her heart came quiet and she remembered that she loved the man well and his laughing face came before her and stirred her and she said to herself remorsefully, “I will make him a dainty dish for his meal this noon. It may be I was too angry for but a little money spent, after all.”

She was in great haste and longing to be gone then and at home to make the dish and show him she was changed, but when she was come there he still lay angry in the bed and he lay with his face inward and would not say a word. When she had made the dish and had caught some shrimps from the pond to mix into it as he liked and when she called him he would not rise and he would not eat at all. He said very faintly as though he were ill, “I cannot eat indeed—you have cursed the souls out of me.”

She said no more then but set the bowl aside and went silent to her work again, her lips pressed hard together, nor would she aid the old mother when she besought her son to eat. But the mother could not beg him for she remembered freshly all her anger. And as she went the dog came up to her begging and hungry, and she went into the kitchen again and there the dish was she had made for the man. She put out her hand and muttered, “Well, then, I will even give it to the dog.” But she could not do it. After all, it was food for men and not to be so wasted and she set the dish back in the niche of the wall and found a little stale cold rice and gave it to the dog. And she said to her heart that she was angry still.

Yet in the night when she laid herself beside him and the children curled against her in the darkness and she felt the man on her other side, her anger was clean gone. Then it seemed to her this man was but a child, too, and dependent on her as all in this house were, and when the morning came she rose, very gentle and quiet, and after all were fed except him, she went to him and coaxed him to rise and eat, and when he saw her like this he rose slowly as though from a sick bed and he ate a little of the dish she had made and then he finished it, for it was one he loved. And while he ate the old woman watched him lovingly, clacking as she watched, of this and that.

But he would not work that day. No, as the mother went out to the field he sat upon a stool in the sun of the doorway and he shook his head feebly and he said, “I feel a very weak place in me and a pain that flutters at the mouth of my heart and I will rest myself this day.”

And the mother felt that she had been wrong to blame him so heartily that he was like this and so she said, soothing him and sorry for her anger, “Rest yourself, then,” and went her way.

But when she was gone the man grew restless and he was weary of his mother’s constant chatter, for the old woman grew very merry to think her son would be at home all day to talk to, though for the man it was a dull thing to sit and listen to her and see the children playing. He rose then, muttering he would be better if he had some hot tea in him, and he went down the little street to the wayside inn his fifth cousin kept. At the inn there were other men drinking tea, too, and talking, and tables were set under a canopy of cloth upon the street, where travelers might pass, and when such travelers stayed one heard a tale or two of this strange thing and that, and even perhaps some story-teller passed and told his tales, and indeed the inn was a merry, noisy place.

But as he went the man met his sober cousin coming from the field for his first morning meal, having already worked a space since dawn, and this cousin called, “Where do you go and not at work?”

And the man answered complaining and very weak, “That woman of mine has cursed me ill over some small thing I scarcely know, and there is no pleasing her, and she cursed me so sore I had an illness in the night and it frightened even her so that she bade me rest myself today and I go to drink a little hot tea for the comfort of my belly.”

Then the cousin spat and passed on, saying nothing, for he was by nature a man who did not speak unless he must, and kept what few thoughts he had close in him.

So was the man impatient with his life and it seemed to him a thing not to be borne forever that there was to be no new thing for him, and only this wheel of days, year upon year, until he grew old and died. The more hard was it to him because the few travelers who came past the wayside inn told him of strange and wonderful things beyond the circle of the hills and at the mouth of the river that flowed past them. There the river met the sea, they said, and there was a vast city full of people of many hues of skin, and money was easy come by with very little work for it and gaming houses everywhere and pretty singing girls in every gaming house, such girls as the men in this hamlet had never even seen and could not hope to see their lives long. Strange sights there were in that city, streets as smooth as threshing-floors and carts of every sort, houses tall as mountains and shops with windows filled with merchandise of all the world that ships brought there from over seas. A man could spend a lifetime there looking at those windows and he could not finish with the looking. Good food and plenty was there, too, sea fish and sea meats, and after he had eaten a man might enter into a great playhouse where there was every sort of play and picture, some merry to make a man burst his belly with laughing and some strange and fierce and some very witty and vile to see. And strangest thing of all was this, that in the great city all the night was light as day with a sort of lamp they had, not made with hands nor lit with any flame, but with some pure light that was caught from out of heaven.

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?”