THE MOTHER
By Pearl S. Buck
THE MOTHER
THE FIRST WIFE
AND OTHER STORIES
SONS
THE GOOD EARTH
EAST WIND: WEST WIND
ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS
[SHUI HU CHUAN]
TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE
THE
MOTHER
by Pearl S. Buck
THE JOHN DAY COMPANY
New York
COPYRIGHT, 1934, BY PEARL S. BUCK
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE JOHN DAY COMPANY, INC., NEW YORK,
BY J. J. LITTLE & IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
THE MOTHER
I
IN the kitchen of the small thatched farmhouse themother sat on a low bamboo stool behind theearthen stove and fed grass deftly into the holewhere a fire burned beneath the iron cauldron. The blazewas but just caught and she moved a twig here, a handfulof leaves there, and thrust in a fresh bit of the driedgrass she had cut from the hillsides last autumn. In thecorner of the kitchen as near as she could creep to thefire sat a very old and weazened woman, wrapped in athick padded coat of bright red cotton stuff, whose edgesshowed under a patched coat of blue she wore over it.She was half blind with a sore disease of the eyes, andthis had well-nigh sealed her eyelids together. Butthrough the small slits left open she could see a greatdeal still, and she watched the flare of the flames as theyleaped and caught under the strong and skillful handsof the mother. Now she said, her words hissing softlythrough her sunken, toothless gums, “Be careful how youfeed the fire—there is only that one load—is it two?—andthe spring is but newly come and we have long to gobefore the grass is long enough to cut and here I am as[10]I am and I doubt I can ever go again and pick a bit offuel—a useless old crone now, who ought to die—”
These last words the old woman said many times aday and every time she said them she waited to hear theson’s wife speak as she now did, “Do not say it, oldmother! What would we do if we had not you to watchthe door while we are in the field and see that the littleones do not fall into the pond?”
The old mother coughed loudly at this and gasped outof the midst of her coughing, “It is true—I do that—thedoor must be watched in these evil times with thievesand robbers everywhere. If they came here, such ascreeching as I would raise, daughter! Well I mind it wasnot so when I was young—no, then if you left a hoe outin the night it was there at dawn and in summer we tiedthe beast to the door hasp outside and there it stood againthe next day and—”
But the young mother although she laughed dutifullyand called out, “Did you, then, old mother!” did not hea