Pearl Buck: The Mother

In this little hamlet so had he himself been born, and except to go to the small town which lay behind a curve of the hill upon the river’s edge, he had never once seen anything new in any day he lived. When he rose in the morning there was this circle of low round hills set against this selfsame sky, and he went forth to labor until night, and when night was come there were these hills set against this sky and he went into the house where he had been born and he slept upon the bed where he had slept with his own parents until it grew shameful and then they had a pallet made for him.

Yes, and now he slept there in the bed with his own wife and children and his old mother slept on the pallet, and it was the same bed and the same house, and even in the house scarcely one new thing except the few small things that had been bought at the time of his wedding, a new teapot, the blue quilt upon the bed newly covered, new candlesticks and a new god of paper on the wall. It was a god of wealth, and a merry old man he was made to be, his robes all red and blue and yellow, but he had never brought wealth to this house. No, this man looked often at the god and cursed him in his heart because he could look so merrily down from the earthen wall and into this poor room that was always and ever as poor as it was.

Sometimes when the man came home from a holiday in town or when he had gone on a rainy day to the little inn and gambled a while with the idlers there, when he came home again to this small house, to this woman bearing her children that he must labor to feed, it fell upon him like a terror that so long as he lived there was naught for him but this, to rise in the morning and go to this land of which they owned but little and rented from a landlord who lived in pleasure in some far city; to spend his day upon that rented land even as his father had done before him; to come home to eat his same coarse food and never the best the land could give, for the best must ever be sold for others to eat; to sleep, to rise again to the same next day. Even the harvests were not his own, for he must measure out a share to that landlord and he must take another share and fee the townsman who was the landlord’s agent. When he thought of this agent he could not bear it, for this townsman was such a one as he himself would fain have been, dressed in soft silk and his skin pale and fair and with that smooth oily look that townsmen have who work at some small, light task and are well fed.

On such days when all these thoughts pressed on him he was very surly and he spoke not at all to the woman except to curse her for some slowness, and when her quick temper rose against him it was a strange malicious pleasure to him to fall to loud quarreling with her, and it eased him somehow, although she had often the best of him, too, because her temper was more stout than his, except when she was angry at a child. Even to his anger he could not cling as long as she did, but grew weary of it and flung himself off to something else. Quickest of all would her anger rise if he struck one of the children or shouted at one if it cried. Then she could not bear it, and she flew against him if it were to save a child and ever the child was right and he was wrong, and this angered him more than anything, that she put the children before him, or he thought she did.

Yes, on days like this he held as nothing even the good few holidays he took, the feast days and the long idle winter days when he did nothing but sleep, and when he could not sleep he gambled. A lucky gambler he was, too, and he always came home with more than he took, and it seemed an easy way to live, if he were a lone man and had but himself to feed. He loved the chance of gambling and the excitement and the merriment of the game and all the men crowded together to see what lucky play he made. Truly luck was in his nimble fingers, which even the plough and the hoe had not made stiff, for he was young yet, only twenty and eight years of age, and he had never worked more than he must.

But the mother never knew what was in the heart of the father of her children. That he loved play she knew, but what matter that if he did not lose at play? It was in truth a pride to her that when other women complained aloud of their own men and how the scanty earnings of the land were lost at that table in the inn, she need not complain, and when one cried out to her, “If my poor wretch were but like that pretty man of yours, goodwife, his fingers are faery somehow, so that the money crawls to them of its own accord, seemingly, upon the gaming table — a very lucky woman be you, goodwife!” she smiled complacently and she did not often blame him for his play unless it served as excuse for some other cause of quarrel.

And she did not blame him deeply that he could not work steadily hour after hour in the fields as she did, though at the moment she might lay about him sharply with her tongue. She knew that men cannot work as women do, but have the hearts of children always in them, and she was used now to working on in her steady way while he flung down his hoe and laid himself upon the grass that grew on the footpath between this field and the next and slept an hour or two. But when she said aught to him in her scolding way, which was but the way, after all, her tongue was used to speak, for secretly she loved him well, he would answer, “Yes, and sleep I may for I have worked enough to feed myself.”

She might have said, “Have we not the children then and shall not each do what he is able to make more for them?” But this she did not say because it was true the children seemed ever hers and hers alone, since he did nothing for them. Besides, her tongue was not so adroit as his to find an answer.

But sometimes her wrath would come up hotly and then it would come with more than her usual scolding speech. Once or twice in a season a quarrel would go deep with her and give an unused bitterness to her tongue. When the man bought some foolish trinket in the market with the silver he had taken for the cabbage there, or when he was drunken on a day that was not a holiday, then she would grow angry and well-nigh she forgot she loved him in her heart. This was a deep fierce anger too, which smoldered and broke forth so many hours after his misdeed that the man had almost forgot what he had done, for it was his way to forget easily anything that did not please him, and when her anger came up in her like this she was helpless against it and it must out.

On such a day one autumn he came home with a gold ring on his finger, or one he said was gold, and when she saw it her anger came up and she cried in the strangest, hottest way, “You — and you will not take your share of our common bitterness of life! No, you must needs go and spend the scant bit we have for a silly ring to put upon your little finger! And whoever heard of a good and honest poor man who wore a ring upon his finger? A rich man, he may do it and nothing said, but if a poor man does it, has it any good meaning? Gold! Whoever heard of a gold ring bought for copper?”

At this he shouted at her, his face rebellious as a child’s, his red lips pouting, “It is gold, I tell you! It is stolen from some rich house, the man who sold it told me, and he showed it to me secretly upon the street as I passed, and he had it under his coat, and let me see it as I passed—”

But she sneered and said, “Yes, and what he saw was a silly countryman whom he could trick! And even though it were gold, what if it be seen upon your finger in the town some day and you be caught and thrown into a gaol for thief and then how will we buy you out again, or even feed you in the gaol? Give it to me and let me see if it be gold!”

But he would not give the toy to her. He shook himself sullenly as a child does and suddenly she could not bear him. No, she flew at him and scratched his smooth and pretty face and she beat him so heartily that he was aghast at her and he tore the ring from his finger scornfully but half frightened, too, and he cried, “There — take it! Very well I know you are angry because I bought it for my own finger and not for yours!”