The Mother

by Pearl S. Buck

  And the two walked on a while and at last the mother said in a very passion of bitterness, “It does not matter who begot it and none shall ever know and if you will help me through this, cousin and my sister, I will care for you as long as my life is in me.”

  And the cousin’s wife said in a low voice, “I have not lived so many years as I have and never seen a woman rid herself of a thing she did not want.”

  And for the first time the mother saw a hope before her and she whispered, “But how—but how—” and the cousin’s wife said, “There are simples to be bought if one has the money, strong stuff that kills woman and child sometimes, and always it is harder than a birth, but if you take enough, it will do.”

  And the mother said, “Then let it kill me, if it will only kill this thing, and so save my sons and these others the knowledge.”

  Then the cousin’s wife looked steadfastly at the mother and she stopped where she was and looked at her, and she said, “Yes, cousin, but will it come about again like this, now that your man is dead?”

  Then did the mother swear and she cried in agony, “No, and I will throw myself into the pond and cool myself forever if it comes on me hot again as it did in the summer.”

  That night she dug out from the ground a good half of her store of silver and when the chance came she gave it to the cousin’s wife to buy the simples.

  On a night when all was bought and the stuff brewed, the cousin’s wife came in the darkness and she whispered to the waiting woman, “Where will you drink it? For it cannot be done in any house, being so bloody a business as it is.”

  Then the mother remembered that wayside shrine and how lonely it was with so few wayfarers passing by, and none in the night, and to that wayside shrine the two women went, and the mother drank the brew and she lay down upon the ground, and waited.

  Presently in the deep night the stuff seized on her with such gripes as she never dreamed of and she gave herself up to die. And as the agony went on she came at last to forget all except the agony, and she grew dazed with it. Yet in the midst of it she remembered not to scream to ease herself, nor did they dare to light a torch or any little light, lest any might by some strange chance pass and see from even a distance an unaccustomed light in that shrine.

  No, the mother must suffer on as best she could. The sweat poured down her body like rain and she was dead to everything except the fearful griping, as though some beast laid hold on her to tear the very vitals from her, and at last it seemed a moment came when they were torn from her indeed, and she gave one cry.

  Then the cousin’s wife came forward with a mat she had, and took what was to be taken, and she felt and whispered sadly, “It would have been a boy, too. You are a fortunate mother who have so many sons in you.”

  But the mother groaned and said, “There never will be another now.”

  Then she lay back and rested on the ground a little and when she could they went back to the house, she leaning on the kindly cousin’s arm and holding back her moans. And when they passed a pond, the cousin threw the roll of matting into it.

  For many days thereafter the mother lay ill and weak upon her bed, and the good cousin aided her in what way she could, but she lay ill and half-sick the winter through that year so that to lift a load and carry it to market was a torture and yet she must do it now and then. At last, though, she rose sometimes more easily on a fair day and sat a while in the sun. So spring came on and she grew somewhat better, but still not herself, and often when the cousin brought some dainty dish to coax her she would press her hand to her breast and say, “It seems I cannot swallow. There is something heavy here. My heart hangs here between my breasts so heavy and full I cannot swallow. My heart seems full of pain I cannot weep away. If I could weep once to the end I would be well again.”

  So it seemed to her. But she could not weep. All spring she could not weep nor could she work as she was used, and the elder son struggled to do what must be done, and the cousin helped more than he was able. And the mother could not weep or work.

  So it was until a certain day came when the barley was bearded, and she sat out in the sun listlessly, her hair not combed that morning she was so weary. Suddenly there was the sound of a step, and when she looked up that landlord’s agent stood. When the elder son saw him he came forward and he said, “Sir, my father is dead now and I stand in his place, for my mother has been ill these many months. I must go with you now to guess the harvest, if you have come for that, for she is not able.”

  Then the man, this townsman, this smooth-haired, smooth-lipped man, looked at the mother full and carelessly and well he knew what had befallen her, and she knew he knew and she hung her head in silence. But the man said carelessly, “Come then, lad,” and the two went away and left her there alone.

  Now well she knew she had no hope from this man. Nor did she want him any more, her body had been weak so long. But this last sight of him was the last touch she needed. She felt the lump she called her heart melt somehow and the tears rushed to her eyes, and she rose and walked by a little unused path across the land to a rude lonely grave she knew, the grave of some unknown man or woman, so old none knew whose it was now, and she sat there on the grassy mound and waited. And at last she wept.

  First her tears came slow and bitter but freely after a while and then she laid her head against the grave and wept in the way that women do when their hearts are too full with sorrow of their life and spilled and running over and they care no more except they must be eased somehow because all of life is too heavy for them. And the sound of her weeping reached the little hamlet even, borne on the winds of spring, and hearing it the mothers in the houses and the wives looked at each other and they said softly, “Let her weep, poor soul, and ease herself. She has not been eased these many months of widowhood. Tell her children to let her weep.” And so they let her weep.

  But after long weeping the mother heard a sound, a soft rustling there beside her, and looking up in the twilight, for she had wept until the sun was set, there came her daughter, feeling her way over the rough ground and she cried as she came, “Oh, mother, my cousin’s wife said let you weep until you eased yourself, but are you not eased yet with so much weeping?”

  Then was the mother roused. She was roused and she looked at the child and sighed and she sat up and smoothed back her loosened hair and wiped her swollen eyes and rose and the child put out her hand and felt for her mother’s hand, shutting her eyes against the shining evening glow that was rosy where the sun went down, and she said plaintively, “I wish I never had to weep, for when I weep, my tears do burn me so!”

  At these few words the mother came to herself, suddenly washed clean. Yes, these few words, spoken at the end of such a day, this small young hand feeling for her, called her back from some despair where she had lived these many months. She was mother again and she looked at her child and coming clear at last from out her daze she cried, “Are your eyes worse, my child?”

  And the girl answered, “I think I am as I ever was, except light seems to burn me more, and I do not see your faces clear as once I did, and now my brother grows so tall, I cannot tell if it be you or he who comes, unless I hear you speak.”

  Then the mother, leading this child of hers most tenderly, groaned to herself, “Where have I been these many days? Child, I will go tomorrow when dawn comes and buy some balm to make you well as I ever said I would!”

  That night it seemed to all of them as though the mother had returned from some far place and was herself again. She put their bowls full of food upon the table and bestirred herself, her face pale and spent but tranquil and full of some wan peace. She looked at each child as though she had not seen him for a year or two. Now she looked at the little boy and she cried, “Son, tomorrow I will wash your coat. I had not seen how black it is and ragged. You are too pretty a lad to go so black as that and I your mother.” And to the elder one she said, “You told me you had a finger cut and sore the other day. Let me see it.” And
when she washed his hand clean and put some oil upon the wound, she said, “How did you do it, son?”

  And he opened his eyes surprised and said, “I told you, mother, that I cut it when I made the sickle sharp upon the whetting stone and ready to reap the barley soon.”

  And she made haste to answer, “Aye, I remember now, you said so.”

  As for the children, they could not say how it was, but suddenly there seemed warmth about them and this warmth seemed to come from their mother and good cheer filled them and they began to talk and tell her this and that and the little lad said, “I have a penny that I gained today when we were tossing in the street to see who could gain it, and ever I gain the penny first I am so lucky.”

  And the mother looked on him avidly and saw how fair and sound a lad he was and while she wondered at herself because she had not seen it long ago, she answered him with hearty, sudden love, “Good lad to save the penny and not buy sweet stuff and waste it!” But at this the lad grew grave and said, troubled, “But only for today, mother, for tomorrow I had thought to buy the stuff and there is no need to save it for I can gain a penny every day or so,” and he waited for her to refuse him, but she only answered mildly, “Well, and buy it, son, for the penny is your own.”

  Then the silent elder lad came forth with what he had to say, and he said, “My mother, I have a curious thing to tell you and it is this. Today when we were in the field, the landlord’s agent and I, he said it was the last year he would come to this hamlet, for he is going out to try destiny in other parts. He said he was aweary of this walking over country roads and he was aweary of these common farmers and their wives, and it was the same thing season after season, and he was going to some city far from here.”

  This the mother heard and she paused to hear it, and she sat motionless and staring at the lad through the dim light of the flickering candle she had lit that night and set upon the table. Then when he was finished she waited for an instant and let the words sink in her heart. And they sank in like rain upon a spent and thirsty soil and she cried in a low warm voice, “Did he say so, my son?” and then as though it mattered nothing to her she added quickly, “But we must sleep and rest ourselves for tomorrow when the dawn comes I go to the city to buy the balm for your sister’s eyes and make her well again.”

  And now her voice was full and peaceful, and when the dog came begging she fed him well and recklessly, and the beast ate happy and amazed, gulping all down in haste and sighing in content when he was full and fed.

  That night she slept. They all slept and sleep covered them all, mother and children, deep and full of rest.

  XII

  THE NEXT DAY CAME gray and still with unfinished rain of summer and the sky pressed low over the valley heavy with its burden of the rain, and the hills were hidden. But the mother rose early and made ready to take the girl to the town. She could not wait a day more to do what she could for this child of hers. She had waited all these many days and even let them stretch out into years, but now in her new motherhood, washed clean by tears, she could not be too tender or too quick for her own heart.

  As for the young girl, she trembled with excitement while she combed her long hair and braided it freshly with a pink cord, and she put on a clean blue coat flowered with white, for she never in all her life had been away from this small hamlet, and as she made ready she said wistfully to them all, “I wish my eyes were clear today so I could see the strange sights in the town.”

  But the younger lad, hearing this, answered sharply and cleverly, “Yes, but if your eyes were clear you would not need to go.”

  So apt an answer was it that the young girl smiled as she ever did at some quick thing he said, but she answered nothing, for she was not quick herself but slow and gentle in all she did, and when she had thought a while she said, “Even so, I had rather have my eyes clear and never see the town, perhaps. I think I would rather have my eyes clear.”

  But she said this so long after that the lad had forgotten what he said, being impatient in his temper and swift to change from this to that in play or bits of tasks he did, and indeed, he was more like his father than was any of the three.

  But the mother did not listen to the children’s talk. She made ready and she clothed herself. Once she stood hesitating by a drawer she opened and she took a little packet out and looked at it, opening the soft paper that enwrapped it, and it was the trinkets, and she thought, “Shall I keep them or shall I turn them into coin again?” And she doubted a while and now she thought, “True it is I can never wear them again, being held a widow, nor could I bear to wear them anyhow. But I could keep them for the girl’s wedding.” So she mused staring down at them in her hand. But suddenly remembering, her gorge rose against them and she longed to be free from them and from every memory and she said suddenly with resolve, “No, keep them I will not. And he might come home—my man might come home, and if he found me with strange trinkets he would not believe me if I told him I had bought them myself.” So she thrust the packet in her bosom and called to the girl they must set forth.

  They went along the country road and through the hamlet before there was a stir, it was so early. The mother strode freely, strong again as she had not been for long, her head high and free against the misty air, and she led her daughter by the hand, and the girl struggled to move quickly, too. But she had not known how little she could see. About the well known ways of home her feet went easily and surely enough and she did not know she went by feel and scent and not by sight, but here the road was strange to her, now high, now low, for the stones were sunken sometimes, and often she would have fallen had it not been for her mother’s hand.

  Then the mother seeing this was frightened and her heart ran ahead to meet this fresh evil and she cried out afraid, “I doubt I have brought you too late, poor child. But you never told me that you could not see and I thought it was but the water in your eyes that kept you blinded.”

  And the girl half sobbing answered, “I thought I saw well enough, too, my mother, and I think I do, only this road is so up and down, and you go more quickly than I am used to go.”

  Then the mother slowed her steps and said no more and they went on, more slowly, save that when they came near to that shop of medicine the mother made haste again without knowing that she did, she was so eager. It was still early in the day and they were the first buyers and the medicine seller was but taking down the boards from his shop doors, and he did it slowly, stopping often to yawn and thrust his fingers into his long and uncombed hair and scratch his head. When he looked up and saw this countrywoman and the girl standing there before his counter he was amazed and he cried out, “What is it you want at such an early hour?”

  Then the mother pointed to her child and she said, “Is there any balm that you have for such eyes as these?”

  The man stared at the girl then and at her seared and red-rimmed eyes that she could scarcely open at all so red and seared they were, and he said, “How has she come by such eyes?”

  The mother answered, “At first we thought it was the smoke made them so. My man is dead and I have a man’s work to do on the land, and often has she fed the fire if I came home late. But these last years it seems more than this, for I have saved her the smoke, and there seems some heat that comes up in her of its own accord and burns her eyes. What fire it can be I do not know, being as she is the mildest maid, and never even out of temper.”

  Then the man shook his head, yawning widely again, and he said carelessly, “There are many who have eyes like these from some fire in them, various fires they be, and there is no balm to heal such fever. It will come up and up. Aye, and there is no healing.”

  Now these words fell like iron upon the two hearts that heard them and the mother said in a low swift voice, “But there may be—there must be some physician somewhere. Do you know of any good physician not too costly, since we be poor?”

  But the man shook his tousled head languidly and went to fetch some drug he kept in a
little box of wood, and he said as he went, “There is no skill to make her see, and this I know for I have seen a many such sore eyes, and every day people come here with such eyes and cry of inner fever. Aye, and even those foreign doctors have no true good way I hear, for though they cut the eyes open again and rub the inner part with magic stones and mutter runes and prayers, still the inner fires come up and burn the eyes again, and none can cut away that fire for it burns inside the seat of life. Yet here is a cooling powder that will cool a little while, though heal it cannot.”

  And he fetched a powder rolled in little grains like wheat and the color of a dark wheat, and he put them into a goose quill and sealed the other end with tallow and he said again, “Aye, she is blind, goodwife.” And when he saw how the young girl’s face looked at this news and how she was bewildered like a child is who has received a heavy unseen blow, he added, half kindly, too, “And what use to grieve? It is her destiny. In some other life she must have done an evil thing, looked on some forbidden sight, and so received this curse. Or else her father may have sinned, or even you, goodwife—who knows the heart? But however that may be the curse is here upon her and none can change what heaven wills.” And again he yawned, his brief kindness done, and he took the pence the woman gave him and shuffled into some inner room.

  As for the mother, she spoke back with brave anger and she said, “She is not blind! Whoever heard of sore eyes making people blind? My man’s mother’s eyes were sore from childhood, but she did not die blind!” And she went quickly before the man could make an answer, and she held the girl’s hand hard to stay its trembling, and she went to a silversmith, not to that same one, and she took from her bosom that packet and she gave it to the bearded man who kept the shop and said, in a low voice, “Change me these into coin, for my man is dead and I cannot wear them more.”

  Then while the old man weighed out the trinkets to see what their worth was in coin, she waited and the young girl began to sob a little softly in her sleeve and then she said out from her sobs, “I do not believe I am truly blind, mother, for it seems to me I see something shining there on the scales, and if I were blind I could not see it, could I? What is that shining?”