Then the mother knew the girl was blind indeed, or good as blind, for the trinkets lay bright and plain not two feet from the girl’s face, and she groaned in herself and she said, “You are right, too, child, and it is a bit of silver I had in a ring and I cannot wear now, and so I change it into coin we can use.”
And in this new sorrow come upon her the woman gave no single thought to the trinkets when they were gone or thought of what they meant. No, she only thought of this, that with all their silvery shining her child could not see them, and the old man took them and hung them in his little case where he kept bracelets and rings and chains for children’s necks and such pretty things, and she forgot all they had meant to her except, now, a shining thing her blind child could not see.
Yet was there one thing more to do, and she knew that she must do, if so be the child was to be truly blind. Holding the girl’s hand she went along, shielding her from those who passed, for by now the streets were thronged and many came to buy and sell, farmers and gardeners setting their baskets of green and fresh vegetables along the sides of the streets, and fishermen setting out their tubs of fish there too. But the mother went until she came to a certain shop and she left the girl beside the door and went in alone, and when a clerk came forward to know what she would have, she pointed at a thing and said, “That,” and it was the small brass gong and the little wooden hammer tied to it that the blind use when they walk to warn others they are blind. The clerk struck it once or twice to show its worth before he wrapped it, and hearing that sound the young girl lifted her head quickly and called, “Mother, there is a blind man here, for I hear a sound clear as a bell.”
The clerk laughed loudly then, for well he saw the maid was blind, and he burst out, “There be none but—”
But the mother scowled at him so sourly that he left his words hanging as they were and gave the thing to her quickly and stood and stared like any fool at her while she went away, not knowing what to make of it.
They went home then and the young girl was contented to go home, for as the morning wore on the town grew full of noise and bustle and frightening sounds she was not used to hear and loud voices bawling in a bargain and rude thrusts against her from those she could not see, and she put her little foot here and there, feeling in her delicate way as she went, smiling unconsciously in her pain. But the mother grieved most bitterly in secret and she held hard in her other hand the thing she had bought, which is the sign of those who are blind.
Yet though she had this little gong, she could not give it to the girl. She could not take it that the girl’s eyes were wholly sightless. She waited through the summer and they reaped the grain again, and it was measured to the new agent that the landlord sent, an old man this time, some poor cousin or distant kin, and autumn came, but still the mother could not give the girl the sign. No, there was a thing yet she must do, a prayer to make. For seeing daily her blind child, the mother remembered what the apothecary had said that day, “Some sin her parents did, perhaps—who knows the heart?”
She told herself that she would set forth to a temple that she knew—not to that wayside shrine nor ever to those gods whose faces she had covered—but to a temple far away, a whole ten miles and more, where she had heard there was a kind and potent goddess who heard women when they prayed bitterly. The mother told her two sons why she went and they were grave and awed to think what had befallen their sister. The elder said in his old man’s way, “I have been long afraid there was a thing wrong with her.” But the younger lad cried out astonished, “As for me, I never dreamed there was aught wrong with her eyes I am so used to her as she is!”