The mother

by Pearl S. Buck

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.”