And this thought of little children yet to come was the only comfort she could see in her whole life ahead of her.
But doubtless even this comfort might not have lasted except that her old flux laid hold on her again and made her weak as death, too weak to mourn. She lay there on her bed for many days, purged body and heart, and all her sorrow and her comfort too in abeyance because she was not strong enough to mourn or hope. Many there were who came to exhort her, her neighbors and her cousin’s wife and they said, “Goodwife, after all the child was blind,” and they said, “Goodwife, what heaven has made for us we cannot change and it is useless to mourn for anything in this life.” And they said, “Remember your good sons,” and one day when the cousin’s wife said this the mother answered faintly, “Yes, but my elder son’s wife she does not bear, and my younger son he will not wed.” And the cousin’s wife answered heartily, “Give the elder son’s wife a year or two, cousin, for sometimes when seven years are passed barren, a woman will come to her true nature and bear a harvest of good children, for I have seen it so, and as for the lad’s saying he will not wed, why then he has a love somewhere, and we must find out who she is, and if she is fit for him to wed or not. Yes, truly has he found a love, as young folks will these days, for never was there a man in all the world, I swear, who would not wed!”
But the mother whispered, “Bend down your ear, sister, and put it against my lips,” and when the cousin’s wife had done this the mother whispered, “Since sorrow follows me and everything goes wrong with me, I fear sometimes it is that old sin of mine that the gods know about—perhaps heaven will not give me grandsons!” And when she thought of this she closed her eyes and two great tears came out from under her closed lids. She thought of all her sins, not only the one the cousin’s wife knew of, but all the many times she had said she was widow and the letters that she wrote and all the lies. Not that she held the lies pure sin, since all must lie a little now and then for honor’s sake, but here the sin was, that she had lied and said her man was dead. Almost was it now when she thought of it as if she had put her hand forth and brought his death on him, and she had used this lie of death to hope another man would have her. So all these sins of hers, so old she could forget them many days together when she was well, came back fresh and now when she was weak and sorrowful, the heavier because she could not tell them all but must carry them in herself, and heaviest because she was a woman held in good repute among her fellows.
She grew so low in mind that nothing cheered her much except to have her younger son about her. Yes, although the elder son’s wife tended her most carefully and brought her food ready and hot when she would have it and even walked a mile or two to another village to fetch a certain sort of dried curd they made there from beans, and although the mother leaned on her in every sort of way and called to her if she would so much as turn herself in her bed, yet the son’s wife was no comfort to her, and often when she did her most careful best the mother would scold her that her hands were cold or her face so yellow and stare at her in some half hostile, childish way. But still the older woman never blamed the son’s wife any more that she was childless. No, she said no more of that, believing somehow dimly that her own sins might be the cause.
But she rose from her bed at last, and when the autumn was well gone the sharpness of her pain had ebbed with it and she was dreary all day long but not frantic, and she could think of her maid, but the edge of pain was gone. At last she even said to her own heart, “Aye, perhaps even what they say is true, perhaps it is better that my maid is dead. There are so many things worse than death.”
And she held fast to this one thought.
And all the hamlet helped her. No one ever spoke of the maid again before her, nor doubtless anywhere, since there is nothing to be remembered in a blind maid and there are many like her everywhere. First they did not speak of her where the mother was, to spare the mother pain, and then they did not speak because there was naught new to tell of it, and because other news came of other things and people, and the maid’s little life was ended.
For a while the gossip went carefully where the mother was and took thought not to be alone with her, but when she saw how feeble the mother was when she rose up from her bed, she grew cheerful then and called out greeting as she ever had.
And the mother let the past be silent, except sometimes in her own heart.