The Mother: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

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!”
    At this she felt fresh anger, because when he spoke she was astonished to know he spoke the truth, and it was secret pain to her that he never bought any trinket to put into her ears or on her fingers as some men do for their wives, and this she did think of when she saw the ring. She stared at him and he said again, his voice breaking with pity for himself and his hard life, “You ever do begrudge me the smallest good thing for myself. No, all we have must go for those brats you breed!”
    He began to weep then in good earnest and he went and flung himself upon the bed and lay there weeping and making the most of his weeping for her to hear, and his old mother who had heard the quarrel in greatest fright ran to him as best she could and coaxed him lest he be ill, and she cast hostile looks at the daughter-in-law whom commonly she loved well enough, and the children wept when they saw their father weep, and felt their mother hard and harsh.
    But the mother was not cool yet. She picked up the ring from the dust where he had thrown it and put it between her teeth and bit on it, lest by any chance it might be the gold he said it was and a good bargain they could sell again for something. It was true that sometimes stolen things were cheaply sold, but scarcely, she thought, so cheaply as he said this was, although he might have lied, perhaps, in fear of her. But when she bit on it the thing would not give at all between her hard white teeth as it must if the gold were pure, and she cried out in new anger, “And if it were gold would it not be soft between my teeth? It is brass and hard—” she gnawed at it a while and spat the yellow shallow gold from out her mouth—“See, it has scarce been dipped even in the gold!”
    She could not bear it then that the man had been so childishly deceived, and she went out from him to work upon the land, her heart hard so that she would not see the sobbing children nor would she hear the old mother’s quavering anxious voice that said, “When I was young I let my man be pleased—a wife should let her man be pleased with a little slight thing …” No, she would not hear anything to cool her anger down.
    But after she had worked a while on the land the gentle autumn wind blew into her angry heart and cooled it without her knowing it. Drifting leaves and brown hillsides from which the green of summer had died away, the gray sky and the far cry of wild geese flying southward, the quiescent land and all the quiet melancholy of the falling year stole into her heart without her knowledge and made her kind again. And while her hand scattered the winter wheat into the soft and well-tilled soil, in her heart came quiet and she remembered that she loved the man well and his laughing face came before her and stirred her and