Yet this blind maid was wonderfully clever, too, in her own way about the house. There she needed no sign or staff, and she could wash the rice and cook it, save that her mother would not let her light the fire any more, but she could sweep the room and the threshing-floor, and she could draw water from the pool, and search for eggs if the fowls laid them in some usual place, and she knew by scent and sound where the beasts were and how to set their food before them, and almost everything she could do, except to sew and work in the fields, and for labor in the fields she was not strong enough, for her suffering from babyhood had seemed to stunt her and hold back her growth.
Seeing the young girl move thus about the house the mother’s heart would melt within her and she suffered for what fate might befall this young thing when she must wed her somewhere. For wed she must be somehow, lest after the mother died there be not one to care for the maid nor one to whom she truly could belong, since a woman belongs first to the husband’s house and not to that house where she was born. Often and often the mother thought of this and she wondered who would have a maid who was blind, and if none would have her then what would happen to her in the end. If ever she spoke this matter out the elder lad would answer, “I will care for her, mother, as long as she will do her share,” and this would comfort the mother somewhat and yet she knew a man cannot be fully known until it is seen what his wife is, and she would think to herself, “I must find him such a wife as will take good heed of my blind maid and be kind to her. When I go looking for his wife I must find one who will take heed of two, her husband and his sister.”
It was time, too, the mother found a wife for this elder son of hers. Nineteen years old he had got to be and almost without her knowing it. Yet he had never asked her for a wife nor shown her his need of one. Ever he had been the best and mildest son a mother could have, working hard and never asking anything and if he went to the teashop sometimes or rarely on a holiday in town, although that he never did unless he had some business to put with it, he never took share in any ribaldry, nor even in a game of chance except to watch it from afar, and he was always silent where his elders were.
A very perfect son he was and with but one fault left now that he had passed the little faults of childhood and it was that he would not spare his younger brother. No, it was the strangest thing, but this elder son of hers, who was so even and gentle with all the world and even with the beasts, so silent he would scarcely say what color he would have the next new coat his mother bought him, when he was brother he was hard upon the younger lad and railed against the boy if he grew slack and played, and he held the boy bitterly to every sort of labor on the land. The house was full of quarreling, the younger lad noisy and full of angry words, and the elder brother holding himself silent until he could bear no more and then he fell upon his brother with whatever he had by him or with his bare hands and he beat the boy until he ran blubbering and dodging in and out among the trees and seeking refuge in his cousin’s house. And truly it came to such a pass as this, that the whole hamlet blamed the elder brother for his hardness and ran to save the younger lad, and so encouraged, the lad grew bold and ran away from work and lived mostly at his cousin’s house, lost there among the many lads and maids who grew there as they would, and he came home freely only when he saw his brother gone to work.
But sometimes the elder brother grew so bitter in his heart he came home out of time and found his younger brother and then he caught the lad’s head beneath his arm and cuffed him until the mother would come running and she cried, “Now let be—let be—shame on you, son, to strike your little brother so, and frighten your sister!”
But the young man answered bitterly, “Shall I not chastise him, being older brother to him and his father gone? He is an idle lazy lout, gaming already every time he can, and well you know it, mother, but you have ever loved him best!”
It was true the mother did love this youngest son the best, and he moved her heart as neither of the others did. The eldest son grew man so soon, it seemed to her, and silent and with naught to say to anyone, and she did not know this was because he was so often weary and that she thought him surly when he was only very weary. As for the girl, the mother loved her well but always with pain, for there the blind eyes were always for a reproach and she never could forget that the goddess had not heard her prayer nor had the mother ever heart to pray again, fearing now that it was her own sin come down in some way worse than she could bear because it fell upon her child. So it was that while her heart was ever soft with pity still the maid was never any joy to her. Even when the maid came loving and near and smiling and sat to listen to her mother’s voice, the mother rose with some excuse and busied herself somehow, because she could not bear to see those closed and empty eyes.
Only this youngest son was sound and whole and merry and oftentimes he seemed his father over again, and more and more the mother loved him, and all the love she ever had for the man now turned itself upon this son. She loved him and often stood between him and the elder brother so that when the young man seized the boy she rushed between them and caught the blows and forced her son to cease for shame because he might strike his mother, and then the lad would slip away.
It came to be that after a while the lad slipped often thus away and from his hiding in his cousin’s house he went to wandering here and there and even to the town and he would be gone perhaps a day or two, and then he would run back to his cousin’s house and come out as if he had been there all the time, his eyes upon his elder brother’s mood that day. And if he did not come, the mother would wait until the elder son was gone and she went to the cousin’s house and coaxed him home with some dainty she had made. But she half feared her elder son too these days and sometimes she would start with him to the field or leave soon and come and give the lad his meal first before his brother came, and he picked the best from every dish and she let him, for she loved him so well. She loved him for his merry words and ways and for his smooth round face and for the same supple, lissome body that his father had. The elder lad went bent already with his labor, his hand hard and slow, but this lad was quick and brown and smooth-skinned everywhere and light upon his feet as a young male cat, and the mother loved him.