Here was strange motherhood now that must be so secret and watched with such dismay in the loneliness of the night while the children slept. And however she might be sickened she dared not show it. Strange it was that when she bore her proper children she was not sick at all, but now her food turned on her when she ate a mouthful. It was as though this seed in her was so strong and lusty that it grew like a foul weed in her, doing what it would with her body ruthlessly, and she could not let a sign of it be seen.
Night after night she sat up in her bed, too ill at ease to lie down, and she groaned within herself, “I wish I were alone again and had not this thing here in me—I wish I were alone again as I was, and I would be content—” and it came to her often and wildly that she would hang herself there upon the bedpost. But yet she could not. There were her own good children, and she looked upon their sleeping faces and she could not, and she could not bear to think of the neighbors’ looks on her dead body when they searched her for her cause of death. There was nothing then save that she must live on.
Yet in spite of all this pain the woman was not healed of her desire toward that townsman, though she often hated while she longed for him. Rather did it seem he held her fast now by this secret hold that grew within her. She had repented that she ever yielded to him and yet she yearned for him often day and night. In the midst of her true shame and all her wishing she had withstood him, she yearned for him still. Yet she was ashamed to seek him out, and fearful too lest she be seen, and she could only wait again until he came, because it seemed to her if she went and sought him then she was lost indeed, and after that stuff for any man to use.
But here was a strange thing. The man was finished with her. He came no more throughout that whole summer until the grain was reaped when he must come, and he came hard and quarrelsome as he used to be and he took his full measure of his grain so that the lad cried wondering, “How have we made him angry, mother, who was so kind to us last year?”
And the woman answered sullenly, “How can I know?” But she knew. When he would not look at her, she knew.
Not even on the day of harvest feasting would he look at her, although she washed herself freshly and combed her hair and smoothed it down with oil and put on a clean coat and trousers and her one pair of stockings and the shoes she had made for the old woman’s burial day. So garbed and her cheeks red with sick hope and shyness and her eyes bright with all her desperate secret fears, she hurried here and there busying herself before his eyes about the feast, and she spoke to this one and to that, forcing herself to be loud and merry. The women stared astonished at her flaming cheeks and glittering eyes and at her loud voice and laughter, she who used to be so quiet where men were.
But for all this the man did not look at her. He drank of the new wine made of rice and as he tasted it he cried loudly to the farmers, “I will have a jug or two of that for myself, if you can spare it, farmers, and set the clay seal on well and sound to keep it sweet.” But he never looked at her, or if she came before him his eyes passed over her as they might over any common country wife whose name he did not know.
Then the woman could not bear it. Yes, although she knew she should be glad he did not want her any more, she could not bear it. She went home in the middle of that day of feasting and she searched from out their secret place those trinkets he had given her once and she was trembling while she searched. She hung the rings in her ears, taking out the little wires she had worn there all these years to keep the holes open, and she pushed the rings over her hard strong fingers, and once more she made a chance to see him, standing on the edge of the feast where women stood to serve the men who ate. There the gossip sat among them, gay for the day in her new shoes, and her feet thrust out to show them off, and she cried out, “Well, goodwife, there you are and you did buy your trinkets after all and wear them too, although your man is still away!”
She cried so loudly that all the women turned to look and laugh and the men even turned to see and smile a little, too, at the women’s merriment. Then the agent, hearing the laughter and the witty sayings that arose against the woman, looked up carelessly and haughtily from his bowl, his jaws moving as he looked, for his mouth was full of food, and he said carelessly and loud enough for her to hear, “What woman is it?” And his eyes fell on her scarlet face and he looked away as if he had never known her and fell to his bowl again. And the woman, feeling the scarlet draining from her face too fast, crept out and ran away and they laughed to see her run for shame at all their merriment.
From that day on the mother kept out of the way of others and she stayed alone with her children, and hid the growing of the wild thing within her. Yet she pondered day and night what she could do. Outwardly she worked as she ever had, storing the grain and setting all in order for the winter, and when the festival of mid-autumn came and the hamlet feasted and each house had its own joy and the little street was merry with the pleasure and rejoicing and the houses full of grain and food, the mother, though she had no joy, yet made a few small moon cakes for her own children, too. When the moon rose on the night of the feast, they ate the cakes upon the threshing-floor and under the willow trees and saw the full moon shining down as bright as any sun almost.
But they ate gravely and it seemed the children felt their own lack and the mother’s lack of joy, and at last the eldest said, solemnly, “Sometimes I think my father must be dead because he never comes.”
The mother started then and said quickly, “Evil son you be to speak of such a thing as your own father’s death!”
But a thought had come to her.
And the lad said again, “Sometimes I think I will start forth seeking for him. I might go when the wheat is sown this year, if you will give me a little silver, and I can tie my winter clothes upon my back, if it be I am delayed in finding him.”
Then the mother grew afraid and she cried to turn his mind away, “Eat another little cake, my son, and wait another year or so. What would I do if you went away and did not come back either? Wait until the younger son is large enough to fill your place.”
But the younger son cried stoutly, being wilful always when he had a wish to make, “But if my brother goes, I will go too,” and he set his little red lips pouting and he stared angrily at his mother. Then the mother said reproachfully to the eldest, “There—you see what you do when you say such things and set his mind on wandering!” And she would not hear any more of it.
But the thought clung in her mind, and afterwards she pondered on it. Here was she alone now these five years. Five years—and would not a man have come long since if he were coming? Five years gone—and he must be dead. It must be she was widow, perhaps a widow years long, and never knew it. And the landlord’s agent was not wed. She was widow and he not wed, for she had heard him say that his wife was dead last year but she had not heeded, for what was it to her then, who was not widow? Yes, she must be widow. That night she watched the great moon set high in the heavens and she watched far into the night, the children sleeping and all the hamlet sleeping save a dog here and there barking at the enormous moon, and more and more it seemed to her she must be widow, and if she were—if she were wed as soon as he would say, would it be soon enough?
And in the strangest way the thing hastened upon her. The lad would not forget his plan and he worked feverishly to plough the fields and sow the wheat and when it was done he would have set out that very day to find his father. Tall the lad was now as his father had been almost, and lean and hard as bamboo and as supple, and no longer any little child to bear refusal and he was quiet and stubborn in his nature, never forgetting a plan he made, and he said, “Let me go now and see where my father is—give me the name of the city where he lives and the house where he works!”
Then in despair the mother said to put him off, “But I burned those letters and now must we wait until the new year comes when he will send another.”
And he cried, “Yes, but you said you knew!”
And she said
hastily, “So I thought I did, but what with this and that and the old mother’s dying, I have forgot again, and I know I have forgot, because when she lay dying, I would have sent a letter to him and I could not because I had forgot.” And when he looked at her reproachfully, scarcely believing her, she cried out angrily, “And how did I know you would want to go and leave it all on me now when you are just old enough to be some worth? I never dreamed that you would leave your mother, and I know a letter will come at the new year as it always has.”
So the lad could but put aside his wish then for the time and he waited in his sullen humor, for he had set his heart to see his father. Scarcely could he remember him, but he seemed to remember him as a goodly merry man and the lad longed after him for in these days he did not love his mother well because she seemed always out of temper with him and not understanding of any speech, and he longed for his father.
At last the mother did not know what to do, except that something she must do and quickly, for even if the letter was not written at new year time, the lad would worry at her and sooner or later she must tell him all the truth and how would she ever make him see how what had been a little lie at first to save her pride as woman, had grown great and firm now with its roots in years, and very hard to change?
And then she tried to comfort herself again, and to say the man must be dead. Whoever heard of any man who would not come back sometimes to his land and his sons and his old home, if he yet lived? He was dead. She was sure he was dead, and so saying many times, sureness came into her heart and she believed him dead and there was needed but an outward sign to satisfy the lad and those who were in the hamlet.
Once more she went into the town then on this old task, and she went and sought a new letter writer this time, whom she had never seen before, and she sighed and said, “Write to my brother’s wife and say her husband is dead. And how did he die? He was caught in a burning house, for the house where he lived caught on fire from a lamp turned over by some slave, and there he burned up in his sleep and even his ashes are lost so there is no body to send home.”
And the letter writer wrote her own name for the sister’s name and she gave a false name as of some stranger who wrote to tell the news and for a little more he wrote the name of some other town than this, and he scented something strange here, but he let it pass, too, since it was none of his affair and he had silver here to pay for silence.
So was the woman saved. But she could not wait to finish her salvation. No, she must let the landlord’s agent know somehow, and she went here and there and asked where the landlord’s old home was, where he did not live now but where the agent doubtless was well known. And she grew heedless in her anxiety to be saved, and she ran there and it seemed the gods were with her on that day and aided her, for there he came alone and she met him at the gate of the house and as he was ready to turn in to it. Then she cried out and laid her hand upon his arm, and he looked down at her and at her hand upon his arm and he said, “What is it, woman?”
And she whispered, “Sir, I am widowed—I have but heard this day I am widowed!”
And he shook her hand off and he said loudly, “What is that to me!” And when she looked at him painfully he said roughly, “I paid you—I paid you very well!” And suddenly someone he knew called out from the street and laughed and said, “How now, good fellow? And a very pretty, lusty goodwife, too, to lay hold on a man thus!”
But the man called back, scarcely lifting those heavy lids of his, and he said coldly, “Aye—if you like them coarse and brown, but I do not!” And he went on his way.
She stood there then astonished and ashamed and understanding nothing. But how had she been paid? What had he ever given her? And suddenly she remembered the trinkets he had given her. That was her pay! Yes, by those small worthless trinkets he held himself free of all that he had done.
What could she do, then, knowing all? She set her feet steadfastly upon the road to home, her heart deathly still within her, and she said over and over, “It is not time to weep yet—the hour is not come yet when I may weep.” And she would not let her weeping come. No, the weeping gathered in her great and tremulous but she would not weep. She held her heart hard and silent for a day or two, until the news came, the letter she had written, and she took it to the reader in the hamlet, and she said steadily as she gave it to him, “I fear there is ill news in it, uncle—it is come out of time.”
Then the old man took it and he read it and started and he cried, “It is bad news, goodwife—be ready!”
“Is he ill?” she said in her same steady way.
And the old man laid the letter down and took the spectacles from his eyes and he answered solemnly, staring at her, “Dead!”
Then the mother threw her apron over her head and she wept. Yes, she could weep now and she wept, safely, and she wept on and on as though she knew him truly dead. She wept for all her lonely years and because her life had been so warped and lone and she wept because her destiny had been so ill and the man gone, and she wept because she dared not bear this child she had in her, and last she wept because she was a woman scorned. All the weeping she had been afraid to do lest child hear her or neighbor, now she could weep out and none need know how many were the sorrows that she wept.
The women of the hamlet came running out to comfort her when they heard the news and they comforted her and cried out she must not fall ill with weeping, for there were her children still and the two good sons, and they went and fetched the sons and led them to her for comfort, and the two lads stood there, the eldest silent, pale as though in sudden illness, and the youngest bellowing because his mother wept.
Suddenly in the midst of the confusion a loud howl arose and a noisier weeping than the mother’s, and it was the gossip’s, who was suddenly overcome with all the sorrow roundabout her, and the great oily tears ran down her cheeks and she sobbed loudly, “Look at me, poor soul—I am worse off than you, for I have no son at all—not one! I am more piteous than you, goodwife, and worse than any woman I ever saw for sorrow!” And her old sorrow came up in her so fresh and new that all the women were astonished and they turned to comfort her, and in the midst of the fray the mother went home, her two sons after her, weeping silently as she went, for she could not stay her weeping. Yes, she sat herself down and wept at her own door, and the elder lad wept silently a little too, now, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, and the little boy wept on, not understanding what it meant to have his father dead, since he could not remember what the father was, and the girl wept and pressed her hands against her eyes and moaned softly and she said, “I must weep because my father is dead—my tears burn me so—yet must I weep for my dead father!”
But the mother could not weep to any end, and she knew she could not until she had done what she must do. So for the time she ceased her weeping and comforted them somewhat with her own silence while she thought what she would do.
She would have said there was no path for her to turn, unless to death, but there was one way, and it was to tear from out her body this greedy life she felt there growing. But she could not do it all alone. There must be one to aid her, and there was none to turn to save her cousin’s wife. Much the mother wished she need not tell a soul what she must do, and yet she did not know how to do it alone. And the cousin’s wife was a coarse good creature, too, one who knew the earth and the ways of men and knew full well the earthy body of a woman that is fertile and must bear somehow. But how to tell her?
Yet the thing came easily enough, for in a day or so thereafter when the two women stood alone upon a pathway talking, having met by some small accident or other, the cousin’s wife said in her loud and kindly way, “Cousin, eat and let your sorrowing cease, for I do swear your face is as yellow as though you had worms in you.”
And the thought rose in the mother’s mind and she said it, low and bitterly, “So I have a worm in me, too, that eats my life out.”
And when the cousin’s wife stared, the mother put
her hand to her belly and she said, halting, “Something does grow in me, cousin, but I do not know what it can be unless it is an evil wind of some sort.”
Then the cousin’s wife said, “Let me see it,” and the mother opened her coat and the cousin’s wife felt her where she had begun to swell, and she said astonished, “Why, cousin, it is like a child there, and if you had a husband, I would say that it was so with you!”
Then the mother said nothing but she hung her head miserably and could not lift her eyes, and the cousin saw a stirring in her belly and she cried out in a terror, “It is a child, I swear, yet how can it be except it be conceived by spirit, since your man is gone these many years? But I have heard it said it does happen sometimes to women and in olden times it happened often, if they were of a saintly sort, that gods came down and visited them. Yet you be no great saint, cousin, a very good woman, it is true, and held in good respect, but still angry and sudden sometimes and of a lusty temper. But have you felt a god about?”
Then the mother would like to have told another lie and she longed to say she did feel a god one day when she stood in the wayside shrine to shelter in a storm, but when she opened her lips to shape the lie she could not. Partly she was afraid to lie so blackly about the old decent god there whose face she covered, and partly she was so weary now she could lie no more. So she lifted her head and looked miserably at the cousin’s wife and the red flowed into her pale cheeks and spotted them; she would have given half her life now if she could have told a full deceiving lie. But she could not and there it was. And the good woman who looked at her saw how it was and she asked no question nor how it came about, but she said only, “Cover yourself, sister, lest you be cold.”