The Mother: A Novel by Pearl S. Buck Page A

there was still much rice left and a good bowlful of the cabbage and this she put carefully away where the wind would catch it and keep it fresh. It would be as good at night as it was now if she heated it again. Then she gave suck to the babe, and he drank his fill and slept, a round, fat, sturdy child, sleeping in the strong sun and brown and red with its heat, and the two children stretched in the shade of the willow tree and slept and the old woman nodded on her bench, and over the whole small hamlet the peace of sleep and the silence of the heat of noonday fell, so that even the beasts stood with drooping, drowsy heads.
    Only the mother did not sleep. She took up her spindle and she sat herself in the shade of the willow tree that cast its shadow on the western part of the threshing-floor and she twisted the thread and wound it. But after a while she could not work. Through the morning she had worked steadily and smoothly, twisting and turning and spinning, but now she could not be still. It was as though some strange anxiety gathered like a power in her body. She had never known the man not to come home for his food. She murmured to herself, “It must be he has gone into the town to game or for something or other.”
    This she had not thought of, but the more she thought upon it the more it seemed true that so he had done. And after a while her cousin-neighbor came out to go to his fields and after a while his wife awoke from where she had sat sleeping by a tree, and she called, “Has your man gone for the day somewhere?”
    The mother answered easily, “Aye, he has gone to the town on some business of his own,” and the cousin searching slowly among his hoes and spades for what he wanted called in his thin voice, “Aye, I saw him gay in his new blue robe and set for town!”
    “Aye,” said the woman.
    Now her heart eased itself somewhat, and she fell to spinning again with more zeal, since the cousin had seen him set for town. He had gone for a day’s pleasure, doubtless, flinging himself off for the day to revenge himself on her. It was what he would do with his new gown and that brass ring of his scrubbed bright and clean and his hair covered with oil. She nursed her anger somewhat at the thought. But her anger was dead, and she could not make it live again, because it was mingled with some strange anxiety still, for all the cousin’s words.
    The afternoon wore on long and hot. The old woman woke and cried that her mouth was dry as bark and the mother rose and fetched her tea to drink, and the children woke and rolled in the dust a while and rose at last to play, and the babe woke and lay merry in his basket, happy with his sleep.
    Still the mother could not rest. If she could have slept she would have, and on any common day she could have dropped easily into sleep even as she worked, since she was so sound and robust that sleep came on her deep and sweet and without her seeking it. But there was some gnawing in her heart today that held her wide awake and as though she listened for some sound that must come.
    She rose at last impatient with her waiting and weary of the empty street that was empty for her so long as she did not see the one she sought, and she took up the babe and set him on her thigh and she took her hoe and went to the field, and she called to the old woman, “I go to weed the corn on the south hillside.” And as she went she thought to herself that it would be easier if she were not at the house, and the hours would pass more quickly if she pushed her body to some hard labor.
    So through the afternoon she worked in the corn field, her face shielded from the sun’s heat with a blue cotton kerchief, and up and down she moved her hoe unceasingly among the green young corn. It was but a small, ragged field, for all of their land which could bear it they put into rice, terracing even the hillsides as high as water could be forced, because rice is a more dainty food than corn and sells for