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Margaret Ogilvy
By
J. M. Barrie
MARGARET
OGILVY
BY
HER SON
TO
THE
MEMORY OF
MY
SISTER
JANE
ANN
Contents
CHAPTER
I—HOW MY MOTHER GOT HER SOFT FACE.
CHAPTER
VI—HER MAID OF ALL WORK
CHAPTER
VIII—A PANIC IN THE HOUSE
CHAPTER
X—ART THOU AFRAID HIS POWER SHALL FAIL?.
On th=
e day
I was born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, and in our little house it w=
as
an event, the first great victory in a woman’s long campaign; how they had =
been
laboured for, the pound-note and the thirty threepenny-bits they cost, what
anxiety there was about the purchase, the show they made in possession of t=
he
west room, my father’s unnatural coolness when he brought them in (but his =
face
was white)—I so often heard the tale afterwards, and shared as boy and man =
in
so many similar triumphs, that the coming of the chairs seems to be somethi=
ng I
remember, as if I had jumped out of bed on that first day, and run ben to s=
ee
how they looked. I am sure my moth=
er’s
feet were ettling to be ben long before they could be trusted, and that the
moment after she was left alone with me she was discovered barefooted in the
west room, doctoring a scar (which she had been the first to detect) on one=
of
the chairs, or sitting on them regally, or withdrawing and re-opening the d=
oor
suddenly to take the six by surprise.
And then, I think, a shawl was flung over her (it is strange to me to
think it was not I who ran after her with the shawl), and she was escorted
sternly back to bed and reminded that she had promised not to budge, to whi=
ch
her reply was probably that she had been gone but an instant, and the
implication that therefore she had not been gone at all. Thus was one little bit of her revealed=
to me
at once: I wonder if I took note of it.
Neighbours came in to see the boy and the chairs. I wonder if she deceived me when she af=
fected
to think that there were others like us, or whether I saw through her from =
the
first, she was so easily seen through.
When she seemed to agree with them that it would be impossible to gi=
ve
me a college education, was I so easily taken in, or did I know already what
ambitions burned behind that dear face? when they spoke of the chairs as the
goal quickly reached, was I such a newcomer that her timid lips must say ‘T=
hey
are but a beginning’ before I heard the words?
And when we were left together, did I laugh at the great things that
were in her mind, or had she to whisper them to me first, and then did I pu=
t my
arm round her and tell her that I would help?
Thus it was for such a long time: it is strange to me to feel that it
was not so from the beginning.
It is all guess-work for six years, and she wh=
om I
see in them is the woman who came suddenly into view when they were at an
end. Her timid lips I have said, b=
ut
they were not timid then, and when I knew her the timid lips had come. The soft face—they say the face was not=
so
soft then. The shawl that was flun=
g over
her—we had not begun to hunt her with a shawl, nor to make our bodies a scr=
een
between her and the draughts, nor to creep into her room a score of times in
the night to stand looking at her as she slept.
We did not see her becoming little then, nor sharply turn our heads =
when
she said wonderingly how small her arms had grown. In her happiest moments—and never was a
happier woman—her mouth did not of a sudden begin to twitch, and tears to l=
ie
on the mute blue eyes in which I have read all I know and would ever care t=
o write. For when you looked into my mother’s ey=
es you
knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world—it was to open=
the
minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts.
And that is the beginning and end of literature. Those eyes that I cannot see until I wa=
s six
years old have guided me through life, and I pray God they may remain my on=
ly
earthly judge to the last. They we=
re
never more my guide than when I helped to put her to earth, not whimpering
because my mother had been taken away after seventy-six glorious years of l=
ife,
but exulting in her even at the grave.
* * * * *=
She had a son who was far away at school. I remember very little about him, only =
that
he was a merry-faced boy who ran like a squirrel up a tree and shook the
cherries into my lap. When he was
thirteen and I was half his age the terrible news came, and I have been told
the face of my mother was awful in its calmness as she set off to get betwe=
en
Death and her boy. We trooped with=
her
down the brae to the wooden station, and I think I was envying her the jour=
ney
in the mysterious wagons; I know we played around her, proud of our right t=
o be
there, but I do not recall it, I only speak from hearsay. Her ticket was taken, she had bidden us=
good-bye
with that fighting face which I cannot see, and then my father came out of =
the
telegraph-office and said huskily, ‘He’s gone!’
Then we turned very quietly and went home again up the little brae.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> But I speak from hearsay no longer; I k=
new my
mother for ever now.
That is how she got her soft face and her path=
etic
ways and her large charity, and why other mothers ran to her when they had =
lost
a child. ‘Dinna greet, poor Janet,’ she would say to them; and they would
answer, ‘Ah, Margaret, but you’re greeting yoursel.’ Margaret Ogilvy had been her maiden nam=
e, and
after the Scotch custom she was still Margaret Ogilvy to her old friends. Margaret Ogilvy I loved to name her.
She was always delicate from that hour, and for
many months she was very ill. I ha=
ve
heard that the first thing she expressed a wish to see was the christening
robe, and she looked long at it and then turned her face to the wall. That was what made me as a boy think of=
it
always as the robe in which he was christened, but I knew later that we had=
all
been christened in it, from the oldest of the family to the youngest, betwe=
en whom
stood twenty years. Hundreds of ot=
her
children were christened in it also, such robes being then a rare possessio=
n,
and the lending of ours among my mother’s glories. It was carried carefully from house to =
house,
as if it were itself a child; my mother made much of it, smoothed it out, p=
etted
it, smiled to it before putting it into the arms of those to whom it was be=
ing
lent; she was in our pew to see it borne magnificently (something inside it
now) down the aisle to the pulpit-side, when a stir of expectancy went thro=
ugh
the church and we kicked each other’s feet beneath the book-board but were
reverent in the face; and however the child might behave, laughing brazenly=
or
skirling to its mother’s shame, and whatever the father as he held it up mi=
ght
do, look doited probably and bow at the wrong time, the christening robe of
long experience helped them through. And
when it was brought back to her she took it in her arms as softly as if it
might be asleep, and unconsciously pressed it to her breast: there was never
anything in the house that spoke to her quite so eloquently as that little
white robe; it was the one of her children that always remained a baby. And she had not made it herself, which =
was the
most wonderful thing about it to me, for she seemed to have made all other
things. All the clothes in the hou=
se
were of her making, and you don’t know her in the least if you think they w=
ere
out of the fashion; she turned them and made them new again, she beat them =
and
made them new again, and then she coaxed them into being new again just for=
the
last time, she let them out and took them in and put on new braid, and adde=
d a piece
up the back, and thus they passed from one member of the family to another
until they reached the youngest, and even when we were done with them they
reappeared as something else. In t=
he
fashion! I must come back to this.=
Never was a woman with such an eye for
it. She had no fashion-plates; she=
did
not need them. The minister’s wife=
(a
cloak), the banker’s daughters (the new sleeve)—they had but to pass our wi=
ndow
once, and the scalp, so to speak, was in my mother’s hands. Observe her rushing, scissors in hand, =
thread
in mouth, to the drawers where her daughters’ Sabbath clothes were kept.
My mother lay in bed with the christening robe
beside her, and I peeped in many times at the door and then went to the sta=
ir
and sat on it and sobbed. I know n=
ot if
it was that first day, or many days afterwards, that there came to me, my
sister, the daughter my mother loved the best; yes, more I am sure even than
she loved me, whose great glory she has been since I was six years old. This sister, who was then passing out o=
f her
‘teens, came to me with a very anxious face and wringing her hands, and she
told me to go ben to my mother and say to her that she still had another
boy. I went ben excitedly, but the=
room
was dark, and when I heard the door shut and no sound come from the bed I w=
as
afraid, and I stood still. I suppo=
se I
was breathing hard, or perhaps I was crying, for after a time I heard a
listless voice that had never been listless before say, ‘Is that you?’ I think the tone hurt me, for I made no=
answer,
and then the voice said more anxiously ‘Is that you?’ again. I thought it was the dead boy she was
speaking to, and I said in a little lonely voice, ‘No, it’s no him, it’s ju=
st
me.’ Then I heard a cry, and my mo=
ther
turned in bed, and though it was dark I knew that she was holding out her a=
rms.
After that I sat a great deal in her bed tryin=
g to
make her forget him, which was my crafty way of playing physician, and if I=
saw
any one out of doors do something that made the others laugh I immediately
hastened to that dark room and did it before her. I suppose I was an odd little figure; I=
have
been told that my anxiety to brighten her gave my face a strained look and =
put
a tremor into the joke (I would stand on my head in the bed, my feet agains=
t the
wall, and then cry excitedly, ‘Are you laughing, mother?’)—and perhaps what
made her laugh was something I was unconscious of, but she did laugh sudden=
ly
now and then, whereupon I screamed exultantly to that dear sister, who was =
ever
in waiting, to come and see the sight, but by the time she came the soft fa=
ce
was wet again. Thus I was deprived of some of my glory, and I remember once
only making her laugh before witnesses.
I kept a record of her laughs on a piece of paper, a stroke for each,
and it was my custom to show this proudly to the doctor every morning. There were five strokes the first time =
I slipped
it into his hand, and when their meaning was explained to him he laughed so
boisterously, that I cried, ‘I wish that was one of hers!’ Then he was
sympathetic, and asked me if my mother had seen the paper yet, and when I s=
hook
my head he said that if I showed it to her now and told her that these were=
her
five laughs he thought I might win another. I had less confidence, but he w=
as
the mysterious man whom you ran for in the dead of night (you flung sand at=
his
window to waken him, and if it was only toothache he extracted the tooth
through the open window, but when it was something sterner he was with you =
in
the dark square at once, like a man who slept in his topcoat), so I did as =
he
bade me, and not only did she laugh then but again when I put the laugh dow=
n,
so that though it was really one laugh with a tear in the middle I counted =
it
as two.
It was doubtless that same sister who told me =
not
to sulk when my mother lay thinking of him, but to try instead to get her to
talk about him. I did not see how =
this
could make her the merry mother she used to be, but I was told that if I co=
uld
not do it nobody could, and this made me eager to begin. At first, they say, I was often jealous,
stopping her fond memories with the cry, ‘Do you mind nothing about me?’ but
that did not last; its place was taken by an intense desire (again, I think=
, my
sister must have breathed it into life) to become so like him that even my =
mother
should not see the difference, and many and artful were the questions I put=
to
that end. Then I practised in secr=
et,
but after a whole week had passed I was still rather like myself. He had such a cheery way of whistling, =
she
had told me, it had always brightened her at her work to hear him whistling,
and when he whistled he stood with his legs apart, and his hands in the poc=
kets
of his knickerbockers. I decided to
trust to this, so one day after I had learned his whistle (every boy of
enterprise invents a whistle of his own) from boys who had been his comrade=
s, I
secretly put on a suit of his clothes, dark grey they were, with little spo=
ts,
and they fitted me many years afterwards, and thus disguised I slipped, unk=
nown
to the others, into my mother’s room.
Quaking, I doubt not, yet so pleased, I stood still until she saw me,
and then—how it must have hurt her!
‘Listen!’ I cried in a glow of triumph, and I stretched my legs wide
apart and plunged my hands into the pockets of my knickerbockers, and began=
to
whistle.
She lived twenty-nine years after his death, s=
uch
active years until toward the end, that you never knew where she was unless=
you
took hold of her, and though she was frail henceforth and ever growing frai=
ler,
her housekeeping again became famous, so that brides called as a matter of =
course
to watch her ca’ming and sanding and stitching: there are old people still,=
one
or two, to tell with wonder in their eyes how she could bake twenty-four
bannocks in the hour, and not a chip in one of them. And how many she gave
away, how much she gave away of all she had, and what pretty ways she had of
giving it! Her face beamed and rip=
pled
with mirth as before, and her laugh that I had tried so hard to force came =
running
home again. I have heard no such l=
augh
as hers save from merry children; the laughter of most of us ages, and wears
out with the body, but hers remained gleeful to the last, as if it were born
afresh every morning. There was al=
ways
something of the child in her, and her laugh was its voice, as eloquent of =
the
past to me as was the christening robe to her.
But I had not made her forget the bit of her that was dead; in those
nine-and-twenty years he was not removed one day farther from her. Many a t=
ime
she fell asleep speaking to him, and even while she slept her lips moved and
she smiled as if he had come back to her, and when she woke he might vanish=
so
suddenly that she started up bewildered and looked about her, and then said
slowly, ‘My David’s dead!’ or perhaps he remained long enough to whisper wh=
y he
must leave her now, and then she lay silent with filmy eyes. When I became a man and he was still a =
boy of
thirteen, I wrote a little paper called ‘Dead this Twenty Years,’ which was
about a similar tragedy in another woman’s life, and it is the only thing I
have written that she never spoke about, not even to that daughter she loved
the best. No one ever spoke of it =
to
her, or asked her if she had read it: one does not ask a mother if she knows
that there is a little coffin in the house.
She read many times the book in which it is printed, but when she ca=
me
to that chapter she would put her hands to her heart or even over her ears.=
What =
she
had been, what I should be, these were the two great subjects between us in=
my
boyhood, and while we discussed the one we were deciding the other, though
neither of us knew it.
Before I reached my tenth year a giant entered=
my
native place in the night, and we woke to find him in possession. He transformed it into a new town at a =
rate
with which we boys only could keep up, for as fast as he built dams we made
rafts to sail in them; he knocked down houses, and there we were crying
‘Pilly!’ among the ruins; he dug trenches, and we jumped them; we had to be
dragged by the legs from beneath his engines, he sunk wells, and in we
went. But though there were never
circumstances to which boys could not adapt themselves in half an hour, old=
er
folk are slower in the uptake, and I am sure they stood and gaped at the
changes so suddenly being worked in our midst, and scarce knew their way ho=
me
now in the dark. Where had been fo=
rmerly
but the click of the shuttle was soon the roar of ‘power,’ handlooms were
pushed into a corner as a room is cleared for a dance; every morning at
half-past five the town was wakened with a yell, and from a chimney-stack t=
hat
rose high into our caller air the conqueror waved for evermore his flag of
smoke. Another era had dawned, new
customs, new fashions sprang into life, all as lusty as if they had been bo=
rn
at twenty-one; as quickly as two people may exchange seats, the daughter, t=
ill
now but a knitter of stockings, became the breadwinner, he who had been the
breadwinner sat down to the knitting of stockings: what had been yesterday a
nest of weavers was to-day a town of girls.
I am not of those who would fling stones at the
change; it is something, surely, that backs are no longer prematurely bent;=
you
may no more look through dim panes of glass at the aged poor weaving tremul=
ously
for their little bit of ground in the cemetery.
Rather are their working years too few now, not because they will it=
so
but because it is with youth that the power-looms must be fed. Well, this teaches them to make provisi=
on, and
they have the means as they never had before.
Not in batches are boys now sent to college; the half-dozen a year h=
ave
dwindled to one, doubtless because in these days they can begin to draw wag=
es
as they step out of their fourteenth year.
Here assuredly there is loss, but all the losses would be but a pebb=
le
in a sea of gain were it not for this, that with so many of the family, you=
ng
mothers among them, working in the factories, home life is not so beautiful=
as
it was. So much of what is great in
Scotland has sprung from the closeness of the family ties; it is there I
sometimes fear that my country is being struck.
That we are all being reduced to one dead level, that character abou=
nds
no more and life itself is less interesting, such things I have read, but I=
do
not believe them. I have even seen=
them
given as my reason for writing of a past time, and in that at least there i=
s no
truth. In our little town, which i=
s a
sample of many, life is as interesting, as pathetic, as joyous as ever it w=
as;
no group of weavers was better to look at or think about than the rivulet of
winsome girls that overruns our streets every time the sluice is raised, the
comedy of summer evenings and winter firesides is played with the old zest =
and
every window-blind is the curtain of a romance. Once the lights of a little town are lit=
, who
could ever hope to tell all its story, or the story of a single wynd in
it? And who looking at lighted win=
dows
needs to turn to books? The reason=
my
books deal with the past instead of with the life I myself have known is si=
mply
this, that I soon grow tired of writing tales unless I can see a little gir=
l,
of whom my mother has told me, wandering confidently through the pages. Such a grip has her memory of her girlh=
ood
had upon me since I was a boy of six.
Those innumerable talks with her made her yout=
h as
vivid to me as my own, and so much more quaint, for, to a child, the oddest=
of
things, and the most richly coloured picture-book, is that his mother was o=
nce
a child also, and the contrast between what she is and what she was is perh=
aps the
source of all humour. My mother’s
father, the one hero of her life, died nine years before I was born, and I
remember this with bewilderment, so familiarly does the weather-beaten maso=
n’s
figure rise before me from the old chair on which I was nursed and now writ=
e my
books. On the surface he is as har=
d as
the stone on which he chiselled, and his face is dyed red by its dust, he is
rounded in the shoulders and a ‘hoast’ hunts him ever; sooner or later that
cough must carry him off, but until then it shall not keep him from the qua=
rry,
nor shall his chapped hands, as long as they can grasp the mell. It is a night of rain or snow, and my m=
other,
the little girl in a pinafore who is already his housekeeper, has been many=
times
to the door to look for him. At la=
st he
draws nigh, hoasting. Or I see him
setting off to church, for he was a great ‘stoop’ of the Auld Licht kirk, a=
nd
his mouth is very firm now as if there were a case of discipline to face, b=
ut
on his way home he is bowed with pity. Perhaps his little daughter who saw =
him
so stern an hour ago does not understand why he wrestles so long in prayer
to-night, or why when he rises from his knees he presses her to him with
unwonted tenderness. Or he is in t=
his
chair repeating to her his favourite poem, ‘The Cameronian’s Dream,’ and at=
the
first lines so solemnly uttered,
‘I=
n a
dream of the night I was wafted away,’
she screams with excitement, just as I screamed
long afterwards when she repeated them in his voice to me. Or I watch, as from a window, while she=
sets
off through the long parks to the distant place where he is at work, in her
hand a flagon which contains his dinner.
She is singing to herself and gleefully swinging the flagon, she jum=
ps
the burn and proudly measures the jump with her eye, but she never dallies
unless she meets a baby, for she was so fond of babies that she must hug ea=
ch
one she met, but while she hugged them she also noted how their robes were =
cut,
and afterwards made paper patterns, which she concealed jealously, and in t=
he fulness
of time her first robe for her eldest born was fashioned from one of these
patterns, made when she was in her twelfth year.
She was eight when her mother’s death made her
mistress of the house and mother to her little brother, and from that time =
she
scrubbed and mended and baked and sewed, and argued with the flesher about =
the
quarter pound of beef and penny bone which provided dinner for two days (bu=
t if
you think that this was poverty you don’t know the meaning of the word), an=
d she
carried the water from the pump, and had her washing-days and her ironings =
and
a stocking always on the wire for odd moments, and gossiped like a matron w=
ith
the other women, and humoured the men with a tolerant smile—all these things
she did as a matter of course, leaping joyful from bed in the morning becau=
se
there was so much to do, doing it as thoroughly and sedately as if the brid=
es
were already due for a lesson, and then rushing out in a fit of childishnes=
s to
play dumps or palaulays with others of her age.
I see her frocks lengthening, though they were never very short, and=
the
games given reluctantly up. The horror of my boyhood was that I knew a time
would come when I also must give up the games, and how it was to be done I =
saw
not (this agony still returns to me in dreams, when I catch myself playing
marbles, and look on with cold displeasure); I felt that I must continue
playing in secret, and I took this shadow to her, when she told me her own
experience, which convinced us both that we were very like each other
inside. She had discovered that wo=
rk is
the best fun after all, and I learned it in time, but have my lapses, and so
had she.
I know what was her favourite costume when she=
was
at the age that they make heroines of: it was a pale blue with a pale blue
bonnet, the white ribbons of which tied aggravatingly beneath the chin, and
when questioned about this garb she never admitted that she looked pretty in
it, but she did say, with blushes too, that blue was her colour, and then s=
he
might smile, as at some memory, and begin to tell us about a man who—but it=
ended
there with another smile which was longer in departing. She never said, indeed she denied
strenuously, that she had led the men a dance, but again the smile returned,
and came between us and full belief.
Yes, she had her little vanities; when she got the Mizpah ring she d=
id
carry that finger in such a way that the most reluctant must see. She was very particular about her glove=
s, and
hid her boots so that no other should put them on, and then she forgot their
hiding-place, and had suspicions of the one who found them. A good way of enraging her was to say t=
hat her
last year’s bonnet would do for this year without alteration, or that it wo=
uld
defy the face of clay to count the number of her shawls. In one of my books there is a mother wh=
o is
setting off with her son for the town to which he had been called as minist=
er,
and she pauses on the threshold to ask him anxiously if he thinks her bonnet
‘sets’ her. A reviewer said she ac=
ted
thus, not because she cared how she looked, but for the sake of her son.
I have seen many weary on-dings of snow, but t=
he
one I seem to recollect best occurred nearly twenty years before I was
born. It was at the time of my mot=
her’s
marriage to one who proved a most loving as he was always a well-loved husb=
and,
a man I am very proud to be able to call my father. I know not for how many
days the snow had been falling, but a day came when the people lost heart a=
nd
would make no more gullies through it, and by next morning to do so was
impossible, they could not fling the snow high enough. Its back was against every door when Su=
nday
came, and none ventured out save a valiant few, who buffeted their way into=
my
mother’s home to discuss her predicament, for unless she was ‘cried’ in the
church that day she might not be married for another week, and how could sh=
e be
cried with the minister a field away and the church buried to the waist? For
hours they talked, and at last some men started for the church, which was
several hundred yards distant. Thr=
ee of
them found a window, and forcing a passage through it, cried the pair, and =
that
is how it came about that my father and mother were married on the first of
March.
That would be the end, I suppose, if it were a
story, but to my mother it was only another beginning, and not the last.
Then she is ‘on the mend,’ she may ‘thole thro=
’’
if they take great care of her, ‘which we will be forward to do.’ The fourth child dies when but a few we=
eks
old, and the next at two years. Sh=
e was
her grandfather’s companion, and thus he wrote of her death, this stern,
self-educated Auld Licht with the chapped hands:—
‘I=
hope
you received my last in which I spoke of Dear little Lydia being unwell. Now with deep sorrow I must tell you th=
at
yesterday I assisted in laying =
her
dear remains in the lonely grave. =
She
died at 7 o’clock on Wednesday
evening, I suppose by the time you had got the letter.
The Dr. did not think it was croup till late on Tuesday night, and all that Medical aid could
prescribe was done, but the Dr. had
no hope after he saw that the croup was confirmed, and hard indeed would the heart have been that=
would
not have melted at seeing what =
the
dear little creature suffered all Wednesday until the feeble frame was quite worn out. She was quite sensible till within 2 hou=
rs of her death, and then she sunk quite=
low
till the vital spark fled, and =
all
medicine that she got she took with the greatest readiness, as if apprehensive they would make her
well. I cannot well describe my feelings on the occasion. I thought that the fountain-head of my =
tears had now been dried up, but I ha=
ve
been mistaken, for I must confe=
ss
that the briny rivulets descended fast on my furrowed cheeks, she was such a winning Child, and had=
such
a regard for me and always came=
and
told me all her little things, and as she was now speaking, some of her little prattle was very t=
aking,
and the lively images of these =
things
intrude themselves more into my mind than they should do, but there is allowance for modera=
te
grief on such occasions. But when I am telling you of my own grief=
and
sorrow, I know not what to say =
of the
bereaved Mother, she hath not met with anything in this world before that hath gone so near t=
he
quick with her. She had no handling of the last one as she was n=
ot
able at the time, for she only =
had
her once in her arms, and her affections had not time to be so fairly entwined around her. I am much afraid that she will not soon if ever get over this trial. Although she was weakly before, yet she was pretty well recovered, bu=
t this
hath not only affected her mind=
, but
her body is so much affected that she is not well able to sit so long as her bed is making a=
nd hath
scarcely tasted meat [i.e. food]
since Monday night, and till some time is elapsed we cannot say how she may be. There is none that is not a Parent themselves that can fully sympathise =
with
one in such a state. David is much affected also, but it is not =
so
well known on him, and the youn=
ger
branches of the family are affected but it will be only momentary.
But alas in all this vast ado, there is only the sorrow of the world which worketh death. O how gladdening would it be if we were in as great bitterness for sin a=
s for
the loss of a first-born. O how
unfitted persons or families is for trials who knows not the divine art of casting all their cares=
upon
the Lord, and what multitudes a=
re
there that when earthly comforts is taken away, may well say What have I more? all their
delight is placed in some one t=
hing
or another in the world, and who can blame them for unwillingly parting with what they esteem their c=
hief
good? O that we were wise to lay up treasure for the time of ne=
ed,
for it is truly a solemn affair=
to
enter the lists with the king of terrors.
It is strange that the l=
iving
lay the things so little to heart until they have to engage in that war where there is no
discharge. O that my head were
He died exactly a week after writing this lett=
er,
but my mother was to live for another forty-four years. And joys of a kind never shared in by h=
im
were to come to her so abundantly, so long drawn out that, strange as it wo=
uld
have seemed to him to know it, her fuller life had scarce yet begun. And with the joys were to come their sw=
eet,
frightened comrades pain and grief; again she was to be touched to the quic=
k,
again and again to be so ill that ‘she is in life, we can say no more,’ but
still she had attendants very ‘forward’ to help her, some of them unborn in=
her
father’s time.
She told me everything, and so my memories of =
our
little red town are coloured by her memories.
I knew it as it had been for generations, and suddenly I saw it chan=
ge,
and the transformation could not fail to strike a boy, for these first years
are the most impressionable (nothing that happens after we are twelve matte=
rs
very much); they are also the most vivid years when we look back, and more
vivid the farther we have to look, until, at the end, what lies between ben=
ds
like a hoop, and the extremes meet. But
though the new town is to me a glass through which I look at the old, the
people I see passing up and down these wynds, sitting, nightcapped, on their
barrow-shafts, hobbling in their blacks to church on Sunday, are less those=
I
saw in my childhood than their fathers and mothers who did these things in =
the
same way when my mother was young. I
cannot picture the place without seeing her, as a little girl, come to the =
door
of a certain house and beat her bass against the gav’le-end, or there is a
wedding to-night, and the carriage with the white-eared horse is sent for a
maiden in pale blue, whose bonnet-strings tie beneath the chin.
My mo=
ther
was a great reader, and with ten minutes to spare before the starch was rea=
dy
would begin the ‘Decline and Fall’—and finish it, too, that winter. Foreign words in the text annoyed her a=
nd
made her bemoan her want of a classical education—she had only attended a
Dame’s school during some easy months—but she never passed the foreign word=
s by
until their meaning was explained to her, and when next she and they met it=
was
as acquaintances, which I think was clever of her. One of her delights was to learn from me
scraps of Horace, and then bring them into her conversation with ‘colleged
men.’ I have come upon her in lone=
ly
places, such as the stair-head or the east room, muttering these quotations
aloud to herself, and I well remember how she would say to the visitors, ‘A=
y, ay,
it’s very true, Doctor, but as you know, “Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
labuntur anni,”’ or ‘Sal, Mr. So-and-so, my lassie is thriving well, but wo=
uld
it no’ be more to the point to say, “O matra pulchra filia pulchrior”?’ whi=
ch
astounded them very much if she managed to reach the end without being flun=
g,
but usually she had a fit of laughing in the middle, and so they found her =
out.
Biography and exploration were her favourite
reading, for choice the biography of men who had been good to their mothers,
and she liked the explorers to be alive so that she could shudder at the
thought of their venturing forth again; but though she expressed a hope that
they would have the sense to stay at home henceforth, she gleamed with
admiration when they disappointed her.
In later days I had a friend who was an African explorer, and she wa=
s in
two minds about him; he was one of the most engrossing of mortals to her, s=
he
admired him prodigiously, pictured him at the head of his caravan, now atta=
cked
by savages, now by wild beasts, and adored him for the uneasy hours he gave
her, but she was also afraid that he wanted to take me with him, and then s=
he
thought he should be put down by law.
Explorers’ mothers also interested her very much; the books might te=
ll
her nothing about them, but she could create them for herself and wring her
hands in sympathy with them when they had got no news of him for six
months. Yet there were times when =
she
grudged him to them—as the day when he returned victorious. Then what was before her eyes was not t=
he son
coming marching home again but an old woman peering for him round the window
curtain and trying not to look uplifted.
The newspaper reports would be about the son, but my mother’s comment
was ‘She’s a proud woman this night.’
We read many books together when I was a boy,
‘Robinson Crusoe’ being the first (and the second), and the ‘Arabian Nights’
should have been the next, for we got it out of the library (a penny for th=
ree
days), but on discovering that they were nights when we had paid for knight=
s we
sent that volume packing, and I have curled my lips at it ever since. ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ we had in the =
house
(it was as common a possession as a dresser-head), and so enamoured of it w=
as I
that I turned our garden into sloughs of Despond, with pea-sticks to repres=
ent
Christian on his travels and a buffet-stool for his burden, but when I drag=
ged
my mother out to see my handiwork she was scared, and I felt for days, with=
a certain
elation, that I had been a dark character.
Besides reading every book we could hire or borrow I also bought one=
now
and again, and while buying (it was the occupation of weeks) I read, standi=
ng
at the counter, most of the other books in the shop, which is perhaps the m=
ost
exquisite way of reading. And I to=
ok in
a magazine called ‘Sunshine,’ the most delicious periodical, I am sure, of =
any
day. It cost a halfpenny or a penn=
y a
month, and always, as I fondly remember, had a continued tale about the dea=
rest
girl, who sold water-cress, which is a dainty not grown and I suppose never
seen in my native town. This roman=
tic
little creature took such hold of my imagination that I cannot eat water-cr=
ess even
now without emotion. I lay in bed
wondering what she would be up to in the next number; I have lost trout bec=
ause
when they nibbled my mind was wandering with her; my early life was embitte=
red
by her not arriving regularly on the first of the month. I know not whether it was owing to her
loitering on the way one month to an extent flesh and blood could not bear,=
or
because we had exhausted the penny library, but on a day I conceived a glor=
ious
idea, or it was put into my head by my mother, then desirous of making prog=
ress
with her new clouty hearthrug. The
notion was nothing short of this, why should I not write the tales myself?<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> I did write them—in the garret—but they=
by no
means helped her to get on with her work, for when I finished a chapter I b=
ounded
downstairs to read it to her, and so short were the chapters, so ready was =
the
pen, that I was back with new manuscript before another clout had been adde=
d to
the rug. Authorship seemed, like h=
er
bannock-baking, to consist of running between two points. They were all tales of adventure (happi=
est is
he who writes of adventure), no characters were allowed within if I knew th=
eir like
in the flesh, the scene lay in unknown parts, desert islands, enchanted
gardens, with knights (none of your nights) on black chargers, and round the
first corner a lady selling water-cress.
At twelve or thereabout I put the literary cal=
ling
to bed for a time, having gone to a school where cricket and football were =
more
esteemed, but during the year before I went to the university, it woke up a=
nd I
wrote great part of a three-volume novel.
The publisher replied that the sum for which he would print it was a
hundred and—however, that was not the important point (I had sixpence): whe=
re
he stabbed us both was in writing that he considered me a ‘clever lady.’
The malignancy of publishers, however, could n=
ot
turn me back. From the day on whic=
h I
first tasted blood in the garret my mind was made up; there could be no
hum-dreadful-drum profession for me; literature was my game. It was not highly thought of by those w=
ho
wished me well. I remember being a=
sked
by two maiden ladies, about the time I left the university, what I was to b=
e,
and when I replied brazenly, ‘An author,’ they flung up their hands, and one
exclaimed reproachfully, ‘And you an M.A.!’
My mother’s views at first were not dissimilar; for long she took mi=
ne
jestingly as something I would grow out of, and afterwards they hurt her so
that I tried to give them up. To b=
e a
minister—that she thought was among the fairest prospects, but she was a ve=
ry
ambitious woman, and sometimes she would add, half scared at her appetite, =
that
there were ministers who had become professors, ‘but it was not canny to th=
ink
of such things.’
I had one person only on my side, an old tailo=
r,
one of the fullest men I have known, and quite the best talker. He was a bachelor (he told me all that =
is to
be known about woman), a lean man, pallid of face, his legs drawn up when he
walked as if he was ever carrying something in his lap; his walks were of t=
he
shortest, from the tea-pot on the hob to the board on which he stitched, fr=
om
the board to the hob, and so to bed. He
might have gone out had the idea struck him, but in the years I knew him, t=
he last
of his brave life, I think he was only in the open twice, when he ‘flitted’=
—changed
his room for another hard by. I di=
d not
see him make these journeys, but I seem to see him now, and he is somewhat
dizzy in the odd atmosphere; in one hand he carries a box-iron, he raises t=
he other,
wondering what this is on his head, it is a hat; a faint smell of singed cl=
oth
goes by with him. This man had hea=
rd of
my set of photographs of the poets and asked for a sight of them, which led=
to
our first meeting. I remember how =
he
spread them out on his board, and after looking long at them, turned his ga=
ze
on me and said solemnly,
What can I do to be for ever known,
These lines of Cowley were new to me, but the
sentiment was not new, and I marvelled how the old tailor could see through=
me
so well. So it was strange to me to
discover presently that he had not been thinking of me at all, but of his o=
wn
young days, when that couplet sang in his head, and he, too, had thirsted to
set off for Grub Street, but was afraid, and while he hesitated old age cam=
e,
and then Death, and found him grasping a box-iron.
I hurried home with the mouthful, but neighbou=
rs
had dropped in, and this was for her ears only, so I drew her to the stair,=
and
said imperiously,
Wh=
at can
I do to be for ever known, And =
make
the age to come my own?
It was an odd request for which to draw her fr=
om a
tea-table, and she must have been surprised, but I think she did not laugh,=
and
in after years she would repeat the lines fondly, with a flush on her soft
face. ‘That is the kind you would like to be yourself!’ we would say in jes=
t to
her, and she would reply almost passionately, ‘No, but I would be windy of
being his mother.’ It is possible =
that
she could have been his mother had that other son lived, he might have mana=
ged
it from sheer love of her, but for my part I can smile at one of those two
figures on the stair now, having long given up the dream of being for ever
known, and seeing myself more akin to my friend, the tailor, for as he was
found at the end on his board, so I hope shall I be found at my handloom, d=
oing
honestly the work that suits me best.
Who should know so well as I that it is but a handloom compared to t=
he
great guns that reverberate through the age to come? But she who stood with me on the stair =
that
day was a very simple woman, accustomed all her life to making the most of
small things, and I weaved sufficiently well to please her, which has been =
my
only steadfast ambition since I was a little boy.
Not less than mine became her desire that I sh=
ould
have my way—but, ah, the iron seats in that park of horrible repute, and th=
at
bare room at the top of many flights of stairs!
While I was away at college she drained all available libraries for
books about those who go to London to live by the pen, and they all told the
same shuddering tale. London, whic=
h she never
saw, was to her a monster that licked up country youths as they stepped from
the train; there were the garrets in which they sat abject, and the park se=
ats
where they passed the night. Those=
park
seats were the monster’s glaring eyes to her, and as I go by them now she is
nearer to me than when I am in any other part of London. I daresay that when night comes, this H=
yde
Park which is so gay by day, is haunted by the ghosts of many mothers, who =
run,
wild-eyed, from seat to seat, looking for their sons.
But if we could dodge those dreary seats she
longed to see me try my luck, and I sought to exclude them from the picture=
by
drawing maps of London with Hyde Park left out.
London was as strange to me as to her, but long before I was shot up=
on
it I knew it by maps, and drew them more accurately than I could draw them
now. Many a time she and I took ou=
r jaunt
together through the map, and were most gleeful, popping into telegraph off=
ices
to wire my father and sister that we should not be home till late, winking =
to
my books in lordly shop-windows, lunching at restaurants (and remembering n=
ot
to call it dinner), saying, ‘How do?’ to Mr. Alfred Tennyson when we passed=
him
in Regent Street, calling at publishers’ offices for cheque, when ‘Will you
take care of it, or shall I?’ I asked gaily, and she would be certain to re=
ply,
‘I’m thinking we’d better take it to the bank and get the money,’ for she
always felt surer of money than of cheques; so to the bank we went (‘Two te=
ns,
and the rest in gold’), and thence straightway (by cab) to the place where =
you
buy sealskin coats for middling old ladies.
But ere the laugh was done the park would come through the map like a
blot.
‘If you could only be sure of as much as would
keep body and soul together,’ my mother would say with a sigh.
‘With something over, mother, to send to you.’=
‘You couldna expect that at the start.’
The wench I should have been courting now was
journalism, that grisette of literature who has a smile and a hand for all
beginners, welcoming them at the threshold, teaching them so much that is w=
orth
knowing, introducing them to the other lady whom they have worshipped from
afar, showing them even how to woo her, and then bidding them a bright God-=
speed—he
were an ingrate who, having had her joyous companionship, no longer flings =
her
a kiss as they pass. But though she
bears no ill-will when she is jilted, you must serve faithfully while you a=
re
hers, and you must seek her out and make much of her, and, until you can re=
ly
on her good-nature (note this), not a word about the other lady. When at last she took me in I grew so f=
ond of
her that I called her by the other’s name, and even now I think at times th=
at
there was more fun in the little sister, but I began by wooing her with
contributions that were all misfits. In
an old book I find columns of notes about works projected at this time, nea=
rly
all to consist of essays on deeply uninteresting subjects; the lightest was=
to
be a volume on the older satirists, beginning with Skelton and Tom Nash—the
half of that manuscript still lies in a dusty chest—the only story was about
Mary Queen of Scots, who was also the subject of many unwritten papers. Queen Mary seems to have been luring me=
to my
undoing ever since I saw Holyrood, and I have a horrid fear that I may write
that novel yet. That anything coul=
d be written
about my native place never struck me.
We had read somewhere that a novelist is better equipped than most of
his trade if he knows himself and one woman, and my mother said, ‘You know
yourself, for everybody must know himself’ (there never was a woman who knew
less about herself than she), and she would add dolefully, ‘But I doubt I’m=
the
only woman you know well.’
‘Then I must make you my heroine,’ I said ligh=
tly.
‘A gey auld-farrant-like heroine!’ she said, a=
nd
we both laughed at the notion—so little did we read the future.
Thus it is obvious what were my qualifications
when I was rashly engaged as a leader-writer (it was my sister who saw the
advertisement) on an English provincial paper.
At the moment I was as uplifted as the others, for the chance had co=
me
at last, with what we all regarded as a prodigious salary, but I was wanted=
in
the beginning of the week, and it suddenly struck me that the leaders were =
the
one thing I had always skipped.
Leaders! How were they writ=
ten?
what were they about? My mother was
already sitting triumphant among my socks, and I durst not let her see me
quaking. I retired to ponder, and
presently she came to me with the daily paper.
Which were the leaders? she wanted to know, so evidently I could get=
no
help from her. Had she any more
newspapers? I asked, and after
rummaging, she produced a few with which her boxes had been lined. Others, very dusty, came from beneath
carpets, and lastly a sooty bundle was dragged down the chimney. Surrounded by these I sat down, and stu=
died
how to become a journalist.
A devout lady, to whom some friend had present=
ed
one of my books, used to say when asked how she was getting on with it, ‘Sa=
l,
it’s dreary, weary, uphill work, but I’ve wrastled through with tougher job=
s in
my time, and, please God, I’ll wrastle through with this one.’ It was in this spirit, I fear, though s=
he
never told me so, that my mother wrestled for the next year or more with my
leaders, and indeed I was always genuinely sorry for the people I saw readi=
ng
them. In my spare hours I was tryi=
ng
journalism of another kind and sending it to London, but nearly eighteen mo=
nths
elapsed before there came to me, as unlooked for as a telegram, the thought
that there was something quaint about my native place. A boy who found that a knife had been p=
ut
into his pocket in the night could not have been more surprised. A few days afterwards I sent my mother =
a London
evening paper with an article entitled ‘An Auld Licht Community,’ and they =
told
me that when she saw the heading she laughed, because there was something d=
roll
to her in the sight of the words Auld Licht in print. For her, as for me, t=
hat
newspaper was soon to have the face of a friend. To this day I never pass i=
ts
placards in the street without shaking it by the hand, and she used to sew =
its
pages together as lovingly as though they were a child’s frock; but let the
truth be told, when she read that first article she became alarmed, and fea=
ring
the talk of the town, hid the paper from all eyes. For some time afterwards, while I proud=
ly pictured
her showing this and similar articles to all who felt an interest in me, she
was really concealing them fearfully in a bandbox on the garret stair. And she wanted to know by return of post
whether I was paid for these articles as much as I was paid for real articl=
es;
when she heard that I was paid better, she laughed again and had them out of
the bandbox for re-reading, and it cannot be denied that she thought the Lo=
ndon
editor a fine fellow but slightly soft.
When I sent off that first sketch I thought I =
had
exhausted the subject, but our editor wrote that he would like something mo=
re
of the same, so I sent him a marriage, and he took it, and then I tried him
with a funeral, and he took it, and really it began to look as if we had
him. Now my mother might have been
discovered, in answer to certain excited letters, flinging the bundle of
undarned socks from her lap, and ‘going in for literature’; she was racking=
her
brains, by request, for memories I might convert into articles, and they ca=
me
to me in letters which she dictated to my sisters. How well I could hear her sayings betwe=
en the
lines: ‘But the editor-man will never stand that, it’s perfect blethers’—‘By
this post it must go, I tell you; we must take the editor when he’s hungry—=
we canna
be blamed for it, can we? he prints them of his free will, so the wite is
his’—‘But I’m near terrified.—If London folk reads them we’re done for.’
I was now able to see my mother again, and the
park seats no longer loomed so prominent in our map of London. Still, there they were, and it was with=
an
effort that she summoned up courage to let me go. She feared changes, and who could tell =
that
the editor would continue to be kind? Perhaps when he saw me—
She seemed to be very much afraid of his seeing
me, and this, I would point out, was a reflection on my appearance or my
manner.
No, what she meant was that I looked so young,
and—and that would take him aback, for had I not written as an aged man?
‘But he knows my age, mother.’
‘I’m glad of that, but maybe he wouldna like y=
ou
when he saw you.’
‘Oh, it is my manner, then!’
‘I dinna say that, but—’
Here my sister would break in: ‘The short and =
the
long of it is just this, she thinks nobody has such manners as herself. Can you deny it, you vain woman?’ My mother would deny it vigorously.
‘You stand there,’ my sister would say with
affected scorn, ‘and tell me you don’t think you could get the better of th=
at
man quicker than any of us?’
‘Sal, I’m thinking I could manage him,’ says my
mother, with a chuckle.
‘How would you set about it?’
Then my mother would begin to laugh. ‘I would find out first if he had a fam=
ily,
and then I would say they were the finest family in London.’
‘Yes, that is just what you would do, you cunn= ing woman! But if he has no family?’ <= o:p>
‘I would say what great men editors are!’
‘He would see through you.’
‘Not he!’
‘You don’t understand that what imposes on com=
mon
folk would never hoodwink an editor.’
‘That’s where you are wrong. Gentle or simple, stupid or clever, the=
men are
all alike in the hands of a woman that flatters them.’
‘Ah, I’m sure there are better ways of getting=
round
an editor than that.’
‘I daresay there are,’ my mother would say with
conviction, ‘but if you try that plan you will never need to try another.’ =
‘How artful you are, mother—you with your soft
face! Do you not think shame?’
‘Pooh!’ says my mother brazenly.
‘I can see the reason why you are so popular w=
ith
men.’
‘Ay, you can see it, but they never will.’
‘Well, how would you dress yourself if you were
going to that editor’s office?’
‘Of course I would wear my silk and my Sabbath
bonnet.’
‘It is you who are shortsighted now, mother. I tell you, you would manage him better=
if
you just put on your old grey shawl and one of your bonny white mutches, and
went in half smiling and half timid and said, “I am the mother of him that
writes about the Auld Lichts, and I want you to promise that he will never =
have
to sleep in the open air.”’
But my mother would shake her head at this, and
reply almost hotly, ‘I tell you if I ever go into that man’s office, I go in
silk.’
I wrote and asked the editor if I should come =
to
London, and he said No, so I went, laden with charges from my mother to wal=
k in
the middle of the street (they jump out on you as you are turning a corner),
never to venture forth after sunset, and always to lock up everything (I who
could never lock up anything, except my heart in company). Thanks to this editor, for the others w=
ould
have nothing to say to me though I battered on all their doors, she was soon
able to sleep at nights without the dread that I should be waking presently
with the iron-work of certain seats figured on my person, and what relieved=
her
very much was that I had begun to write as if Auld Lichts were not the only
people I knew of. So long as I confined myself to them she had a haunting f=
ear
that, even though the editor remained blind to his best interests, something
would one day go crack within me (as the mainspring of a watch breaks) and =
my pen
refuse to write for evermore. ‘Ay,=
I
like the article brawly,’ she would say timidly, ‘but I’m doubting it’s the
last—I always have a sort of terror the new one may be the last,’ and if ma=
ny
days elapsed before the arrival of another article her face would say
mournfully, ‘The blow has fallen—he can think of nothing more to write
about.’ If I ever shared her fears=
I
never told her so, and the articles that were not Scotch grew in number unt=
il
there were hundreds of them, all carefully preserved by her: they were the =
only
thing in the house that, having served one purpose, she did not convert into
something else, yet they could give her uneasy moments. This was because I nearly always assume=
d a
character when I wrote; I must be a country squire, or an undergraduate, or=
a
butler, or a member of the House of Lords, or a dowager, or a lady called S=
weet
Seventeen, or an engineer in India, else was my pen clogged, and though this
gave my mother certain fearful joys, causing her to laugh unexpectedly (so =
far
as my articles were concerned she nearly always laughed in the wrong place)=
, it
also scared her. Much to her amuse=
ment
the editor continued to prefer the Auld Licht papers, however, as was proved
(to those who knew him) by his way of thinking that the others would pass as
they were, while he sent these back and asked me to make them better. Here again she came to my aid. I had said that the row of stockings we=
re
hung on a string by the fire, which was a recollection of my own, but she c=
ould
tell me whether they were hung upside down.
She became quite skilful at sending or giving me (for now I could be
with her half the year) the right details, but still she smiled at the edit=
or,
and in her gay moods she would say, ‘I was fifteen when I got my first pair=
of
elastic-sided boots. Tell him my c=
harge
for this important news is two pounds ten.’
‘Ay, but though we’re doing well, it’s no’ the
same as if they were a book with your name on it.’ So the ambitious woman would say with a=
sigh,
and I did my best to turn the Auld Licht sketches into a book with my name =
on
it. Then perhaps we understood most
fully how good a friend our editor had been, for just as I had been able to
find no well-known magazine—and I think I tried all—which would print any
article or story about the poor of my native land, so now the publishers,
Scotch and English, refused to accept the book as a gift. I was willing to present it to them, bu=
t they
would have it in no guise; there seemed to be a blight on everything that w=
as
Scotch. I daresay we sighed, but n=
ever were
collaborators more prepared for rejection, and though my mother might look
wistfully at the scorned manuscript at times and murmur, ‘You poor cold lit=
tle
crittur shut away in a drawer, are you dead or just sleeping?’ she had still
her editor to say grace over. And =
at
last publishers, sufficiently daring and far more than sufficiently generou=
s, were
found for us by a dear friend, who made one woman very ‘uplifted.’ He also =
was
an editor, and had as large a part in making me a writer of books as the ot=
her
in determining what the books should be about.
Now that I was an author I must get into a
club. But you should have heard my
mother on clubs! She knew of none =
save
those to which you subscribe a pittance weekly in anticipation of rainy day=
s,
and the London clubs were her scorn.
Often I heard her on them—she raised her voice to make me hear, whic=
hever
room I might be in, and it was when she was sarcastic that I skulked the mo=
st:
‘Thirty pounds is what he will have to pay the first year, and ten pounds a
year after that. You think it’s a =
lot o’
siller? Oh no, you’re mista’en—it’s
nothing ava. For the third part of
thirty pounds you could rent a four-roomed house, but what is a four-roomed
house, what is thirty pounds, compared to the glory of being a member of a
club? Where does the glory come in=
? Sal, you needna ask me, I’m just a doit=
ed
auld stock that never set foot in a club, so it’s little I ken about
glory. But I may tell you if you b=
ide in
London and canna become member of a club, the best you can do is to tie a r=
ope
round your neck and slip out of the world.
What use are they? Oh, they=
’re terrible
useful. You see it doesna do for a=
man
in London to eat his dinner in his lodgings.
Other men shake their heads at him.
He maun away to his club if he is to be respected. Does he get good dinners at the club? Oh, they cow!
You get no common beef at clubs; there is a manzy of different things
all sauced up to be unlike themsels.
Even the potatoes daurna look like potatoes. If the food in a club looks like what i=
t is,
the members run about, flinging up their hands and crying, “Woe is me!” Then this is another thing, you get your
letters sent to the club instead of to your lodgings. You see you would get them sooner at yo=
ur
lodgings, and you may have to trudge weary miles to the club for them, but
that’s a great advantage, and cheap at thirty pounds, is it no’? I wonder they can do it at the price.’ =
My wisest policy was to remain downstairs when
these withering blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence=
.
‘I never saw you so pugnacious before, mother.=
’
‘Oh,’ she would reply promptly, ‘you canna exp=
ect
me to be sharp in the uptake when I am no’ a member of a club.’
‘But the difficulty is in becoming a member. They are very particular about whom they
elect, and I daresay I shall not get in.’
‘Well, I’m but a poor crittur (not being membe=
r of
a club), but I think I can tell you to make your mind easy on that head.
‘If I get in it will be because the editor is
supporting me.’
‘It’s the first ill thing I ever heard of him.=
’
‘You don’t think he is to get any of the thirty
pounds, do you?’
‘’Deed if I did I should be better pleased, fo=
r he
has been a good friend to us, but what maddens me is that every penny of it
should go to those bare-faced scoundrels.’
‘What bare-faced scoundrels?’
‘Them that have the club.’
‘But all the members have the club between the=
m.’
‘Havers!
I’m no’ to be catched with chaff.’
‘But don’t you believe me?’
‘I believe they’ve filled your head with their
stories till you swallow whatever they tell you. If the place belongs to the members, wh=
y do
they have to pay thirty pounds?’
‘To keep it going.’
‘They dinna have to pay for their dinners, the=
n?’
‘Oh yes, they have to pay extra for dinner.’ <= o:p>
‘And a gey black price, I’m thinking.’
‘Well, five or six shillings.’
‘Is that all?
Losh, it’s nothing, I wonder they dinna raise the price.’
Nevertheless my mother was of a sex that scorn=
ed
prejudice, and, dropping sarcasm, she would at times cross-examine me as if=
her
mind was not yet made up. ‘Tell me=
this,
if you were to fall ill, would you be paid a weekly allowance out of the cl=
ub?’
No, it was not that kind of club.
‘I see.
Well, I am just trying to find out what kind of club it is. Do you get anything out of it for accid=
ents?’
Not a penny.
‘Anything at New Year’s time?’
Not so much as a goose.
‘Is there any one mortal thing you get free ou=
t of
that club?’
There was not one mortal thing.
‘And thirty pounds is what you pay for this?’ =
If the committee elected me.
‘How many are in the committee?’
About a dozen, I thought.
‘A dozen!
Ay, ay, that makes two pound ten apiece.’
When I was elected I thought it wisdom to send=
my
sister upstairs with the news. My =
mother
was ironing, and made no comment, unless with the iron, which I could hear
rattling more violently in its box.
Presently I heard her laughing—at me undoubtedly, but she had recove=
red
control over her face before she came downstairs to congratulate me
sarcastically. This was grand news, she said without a twinkle, and I must
write and thank the committee, the noble critturs. I saw behind her mask, and maintained a
dignified silence, but she would have another shot at me. ‘And tell them,’ =
she
said from the door, ‘you were doubtful of being elected, but your auld moth=
er
had aye a mighty confidence they would snick you in.’ I heard her laughing softly as she went=
up
the stair, but though I had provided her with a joke I knew she was burning=
to
tell the committee what she thought of them.
Money, you see, meant so much to her, though e= ven at her poorest she was the most cheerful giver. In the old days, when the article arrived, she did not read it at on= ce, she first counted the lines to discover what we should get for it—she and t= he daughter who was so dear to her had calculated the payment per line, and I remember once overhearing a discussion between them about whether that sub-title meant another sixpence. = Yes, she knew the value of money; she had always in the end got the things she wanted, but now she could get them more easily, and it turned her simple li= fe into a fairy tale. So often in tho= se days she went down suddenly upon her knees; we would come upon her thus, an= d go away noiselessly. After her death I found that she had preserved in a little box, with a photograph of me as a child, the envelopes which had contained my first cheques. There was a little ribbon round them. <= o:p>
I sho=
uld
like to call back a day of her life as it was at this time, when her spirit=
was
as bright as ever and her hand as eager, but she was no longer able to do m=
uch
work. It should not be difficult, =
for
she repeated herself from day to day and yet did it with a quaint unreasona=
bleness
that was ever yielding fresh delight.
Our love for her was such that we could easily tell what she would d=
o in
given circumstances, but she had always a new way of doing it.
Well, with break of day she wakes and sits up =
in
bed and is standing in the middle of the room.
So nimble was she in the mornings (one of our troubles with her) that
these three actions must be considered as one; she is on the floor before y=
ou
have time to count them. She has s=
trict orders
not to rise until her fire is lit, and having broken them there is a demure
elation on her face. The question =
is
what to do before she is caught and hurried to bed again. Her fingers are tingling to prepare the=
breakfast;
she would dearly love to black-lead the grate, but that might rouse her
daughter from whose side she has slipped so cunningly. She catches sight of the screen at the =
foot
of the bed, and immediately her soft face becomes very determined. To guard her from draughts the screen h=
ad
been brought here from the lordly east room, where it was of no use whateve=
r. But in her opinion it was too beautiful=
for
use; it belonged to the east room, where she could take pleasant peeps at i=
t;
she had objected to its removal, even become low-spirited. Now is her opportunity. The screen is an unwieldy thing, but st=
ill as
a mouse she carries it, and they are well under weigh when it strikes again=
st
the gas-bracket in the passage. Ne=
xt
moment a reproachful hand arrests her. She is challenged with being out of =
bed,
she denies it—standing in the passage.
Meekly or stubbornly she returns to bed, and it is no satisfaction to
you that you can say, ‘Well, well, of all the women!’ and so on, or ‘Surely=
you
knew that the screen was brought here to protect you,’ for she will reply
scornfully, ‘Who was touching the screen?’
By this time I have wakened (I am through the
wall) and join them anxiously: so often has my mother been taken ill in the
night that the slightest sound from her room rouses the house. She is in bed again, looking as if she =
had
never been out of it, but I know her and listen sternly to the tale of her
misdoings. She is not contrite.
It is scarcely six o’clock, and we have all
promised to sleep for another hour, but in ten minutes she is sure that eig=
ht
has struck (house disgraced), or that if it has not, something is wrong with
the clock. Next moment she is captured on her way downstairs to wind up the
clock. So evidently we must be up and doing, and as we have no servant, my =
sister
disappears into the kitchen, having first asked me to see that ‘that woman’
lies still, and ‘that woman’ calls out that she always does lie still, so w=
hat
are we blethering about?
She is up now, and dressed in her thick maroon
wrapper; over her shoulders (lest she should stray despite our watchfulness=
) is
a shawl, not placed there by her own hands, and on her head a delicious
mutch. O that I could sing the pæa=
n of
the white mutch (and the dirge of the elaborate black cap) from the day when
she called witchcraft to her aid and made it out of snow-flakes, and the de=
ar
worn hands that washed it tenderly in a basin, and the starching of it, and=
the
finger-iron for its exquisite frills that looked like curls of sugar, and t=
he
sweet bands with which it tied beneath the chin! The honoured snowy mutch, how I love to=
see
it smiling to me from the doors and windows of the poor; it is always
smiling—sometimes maybe a wavering wistful smile, as if a tear-drop lay hid=
den
among, the frills. A hundred times=
I
have taken the characterless cap from my mother’s head and put the mutch in=
its
place and tied the bands beneath her chin, while she protested but was well=
pleased. For in her heart she knew what suited h=
er
best and would admit it, beaming, when I put a mirror into her hands and to=
ld
her to look; but nevertheless the cap cost no less than so-and-so, whereas—=
Was
that a knock at the door? She is g=
one,
to put on her cap!
She begins the day by the fireside with the New
Testament in her hands, an old volume with its loose pages beautifully refi=
xed,
and its covers sewn and resewn by her, so that you would say it can never f=
all
to pieces. It is mine now, and to =
me the
black threads with which she stitched it are as part of the contents. Other books she read in the ordinary ma=
nner,
but this one differently, her lips moving with each word as if she were rea=
ding
aloud, and her face very solemn. T=
he
Testament lies open on her lap long after she has ceased to read, and the e=
xpression
of her face has not changed.
I have seen her reading other books early in t=
he
day but never without a guilty look on her face, for she thought reading was
scarce respectable until night had come.
She spends the forenoon in what she calls doing nothing, which may
consist in stitching so hard that you would swear she was an over-worked
seamstress at it for her life, or you will find her on a table with nails in
her mouth, and anon she has to be chased from the garret (she has suddenly
decided to change her curtains), or she is under the bed searching for
band-boxes and asking sternly where we have put that bonnet. On the whole she is behaving in a most
exemplary way to-day (not once have we caught her trying to go out into the
washing-house), and we compliment her at dinner-time, partly because she
deserves it, and partly to make her think herself so good that she will eat=
something,
just to maintain her new character. I
question whether one hour of all her life was given to thoughts of food; in=
her
great days to eat seemed to her to be waste of time, and afterwards she only
ate to boast of it, as something she had done to please us. She seldom remembered whether she had d=
ined,
but always presumed she had, and while she was telling me in all good faith
what the meal consisted of, it might be brought in. When in London I had to
hear daily what she was eating, and perhaps she had refused all dishes until
they produced the pen and ink. The=
se
were flourished before her, and then she would say with a sigh, ‘Tell him I=
am to
eat an egg.’ But they were not so =
easily
deceived; they waited, pen in hand, until the egg was eaten.
She never ‘went for a walk’ in her life. Many long trudges she had as a girl whe=
n she
carried her father’s dinner in a flagon to the country place where he was at
work, but to walk with no end save the good of your health seemed a very dr=
oll
proceeding to her. In her young da=
ys,
she was positive, no one had ever gone for a walk, and she never lost the
belief that it was an absurdity introduced by a new generation with too muc=
h time
on their hands. That they enjoyed =
it she
could not believe; it was merely a form of showing off, and as they passed =
her
window she would remark to herself with blasting satire, ‘Ay, Jeames, are y=
ou
off for your walk?’ and add fervently, ‘Rather you than me!’ I was one of those who walked, and thou=
gh she
smiled, and might drop a sarcastic word when she saw me putting on my boots=
, it
was she who had heated them in preparation for my going. The arrangement between us was that she
should lie down until my return, and to ensure its being carried out I saw =
her
in bed before I started, but with the bang of the door she would be at the =
window
to watch me go: there is one spot on the road where a thousand times I have
turned to wave my stick to her, while she nodded and smiled and kissed her =
hand
to me. That kissing of the hand wa=
s the
one English custom she had learned.
In an hour or so I return, and perhaps find he=
r in
bed, according to promise, but still I am suspicious. The way to her detection is circuitous.=
‘I’ll need to be rising now,’ she says, with a
yawn that may be genuine.
‘How long have you been in bed?’
‘You saw me go.’
‘And then I saw you at the window. Did you go straight back to bed?’
‘Surely I had that much sense.’
‘The truth!’
‘I might have taken a look at the clock first.=
’
‘It is a terrible thing to have a mother who
prevaricates. Have you been lying =
down
ever since I left?’
‘Thereabout.’
‘What does that mean exactly?’
‘Off and on.’
‘Have you been to the garret?’
‘What should I do in the garret?’
‘But have you?’
‘I might just have looked up the garret stair.=
’
‘You have been redding up the garret again!’ <= o:p>
‘Not what you could call a redd up.’
‘O, woman, woman, I believe you have not been =
in
bed at all!’
‘You see me in it.’
‘My opinion is that you jumped into bed when y=
ou
heard me open the door.’
‘Havers.’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then, when you heard me at the gate?’ <= o:p>
‘It might have been when I heard you at the ga=
te.’
As daylight goes she follows it with her sewin=
g to
the window, and gets another needleful out of it, as one may run after a
departed visitor for a last word, but now the gas is lit, and no longer is =
it
shameful to sit down to literature. If
the book be a story by George Eliot or Mrs. Oliphant, her favourites (and m=
ine)
among women novelists, or if it be a Carlyle, and we move softly, she will
read, entranced, for hours. Her de=
light
in Carlyle was so well known that various good people would send her books =
that
contained a page about him; she could place her finger on any passage wante=
d in
the biography as promptly as though she were looking for some article in her
own drawer, and given a date she was often able to tell you what they were
doing in Cheyne Row that day. Carlyle, she decided, was not so much an ill =
man
to live with as one who needed a deal of managing, but when I asked if she
thought she could have managed him she only replied with a modest smile that
meant ‘Oh no!’ but had the face of ‘Sal, I would have liked to try.’
One lady lent her some scores of Carlyle lette=
rs
that have never been published, and crabbed was the writing, but though my
mother liked to have our letters read aloud to her, she read every one of t=
hese
herself, and would quote from them in her talk.
Side by side with the Carlyle letters, which show him in his most
gracious light, were many from his wife to a friend, and in one of these a
romantic adventure is described—I quote from memory, and it is a poor memory
compared to my mother’s, which registered everything by a method of her own:
‘What might be the age of Bell Tibbits?
Well, she was born the week I bought the boiler, so she’ll be
one-and-fifty (no less!) come Martinmas.’
Mrs. Carlyle had got into the train at a London station and was feel=
ing
very lonely, for the journey to Scotland lay before her and no one had come=
to
see her off. Then, just as the train was starting, a man jumped into the
carriage, to her regret until she saw his face, when, behold, they were old
friends, and the last time they met (I forget how many years before) he had
asked her to be his wife. He was v=
ery
nice, and if I remember aright, saw her to her journey’s end, though he had
intended to alight at some half-way place.
I call this an adventure, and I am sure it seemed to my mother to be=
the
most touching and memorable adventure that can come into a woman’s life.
But there were times, she held, when Carlyle m=
ust
have made his wife a glorious woman. ‘As
when?’ I might inquire.
‘When she keeked in at his study door and said=
to
herself, “The whole world is ringing with his fame, and he is my man!”’
‘And then,’ I might point out, ‘he would roar =
to
her to shut the door.’
‘Pooh!’ said my mother, ‘a man’s roar is neith=
er
here nor there.’ But her verdict a=
s a
whole was, ‘I would rather have been his mother than his wife.’
So we have got her into her chair with the
Carlyles, and all is well. Furthermore, ‘to mak siccar,’ my father has taken
the opposite side of the fireplace and is deep in the latest five columns of
Gladstone, who is his Carlyle. He =
is to
see that she does not slip away fired by a conviction, which suddenly overr=
ides
her pages, that the kitchen is going to rack and ruin for want of her, and =
she
is to recall him to himself should he put his foot in the fire and keep it
there, forgetful of all save his hero’s eloquence. (We were a family who needed a deal of =
watching.) She is not interested in what Mr. Glads=
tone
has to say; indeed she could never be brought to look upon politics as of
serious concern for grown folk (a class in which she scarcely included man),
and she gratefully gave up reading ‘leaders’ the day I ceased to write them=
. But
like want of reasonableness, a love for having the last word, want of humour
and the like, politics were in her opinion a mannish attribute to be tolera=
ted,
and Gladstone was the name of the something which makes all our sex such qu=
eer
characters. She had a profound fai=
th in him
as an aid to conversation, and if there were silent men in the company would
give him to them to talk about, precisely as she divided a cake among child=
ren. And then, with a motherly smile, she wo=
uld
leave them to gorge on him. But in=
the
idolising of Gladstone she recognised, nevertheless, a certain inevitabilit=
y,
and would no more have tried to contend with it than to sweep a shadow off =
the
floor. Gladstone was, and there wa=
s an end
of it in her practical philosophy. Nor
did she accept him coldly; like a true woman she sympathised with those who
suffered severely, and they knew it and took counsel of her in the hour of
need. I remember one ardent Gladst=
onian
who, as a general election drew near, was in sore straits indeed, for he
disbelieved in Home Rule, and yet how could he vote against ‘Gladstone’s
man’? His distress was so real tha=
t it
gave him a hang-dog appearance. He=
put
his case gloomily before her, and until the day of the election she riddled=
him
with sarcasm; I think he only went to her because he found a mournful enjoy=
ment
in seeing a false Gladstonian tortured.
It was all such plain-sailing for him, she poi=
nted
out; he did not like this Home Rule, and therefore he must vote against it.=
She put it pitiful clear, he replied with a gr=
oan.
But she was like another woman to him when he
appeared before her on his way to the polling-booth.
‘This is a watery Sabbath to you, I’m thinking=
,’
she said sympathetically, but without dropping her wires—for Home Rule or no
Home Rule that stocking-foot must be turned before twelve o’clock.
A watery Sabbath means a doleful day, and ‘A
watery Sabbath it is,’ he replied with feeling.
A silence followed, broken only by the click of the wires. Now and again he would mutter, ‘Ay, wel=
l,
I’ll be going to vote—little did I think the day would come,’ and so on, bu=
t if
he rose it was only to sit down again, and at last she crossed over to him =
and
said softly, (no sarcasm in her voice now), ‘Away with you, and vote for Gl=
adstone’s
man!’ He jumped up and made off wi=
thout
a word, but from the east window we watched him strutting down the brae.
It is nine o’clock now, a quarter-past nine,
half-past nine—all the same moment to me, for I am at a sentence that will =
not
write. I know, though I can’t hear=
, what
my sister has gone upstairs to say to my mother:—
‘I was in at him at nine, and he said, “In five
minutes,” so I put the steak on the brander, but I’ve been in thrice since
then, and every time he says, “In five minutes,” and when I try to take the
table-cover off, he presses his elbows hard on it, and growls. His supper will be completely spoilt.’ =
‘Oh, that weary writing!’
‘I can do no more, mother, so you must come do=
wn
and stop him.’
‘I have no power over him,’ my mother says, but
she rises smiling, and presently she is opening my door.
‘In five minutes!’ I cry, but when I see that =
it
is she I rise and put my arm round her.
‘What a full basket!’ she says, looking at the waste-paper basket, w=
hich
contains most of my work of the night and with a dear gesture she lifts up a
torn page and kisses it. ‘Poor thi=
ng,’
she says to it, ‘and you would have liked so fine to be printed!’ and she p=
uts
her hand over my desk to prevent my writing more.
‘In the last five minutes,’ I begin, ‘one can
often do more than in the first hour.’
‘Many a time I’ve said it in my young days,’ s=
he
says slowly.
‘And proved it, too!’ cries a voice from the d=
oor,
the voice of one who was prouder of her even than I; it is true, and yet al=
most
unbelievable, that any one could have been prouder of her than I.
‘But those days are gone,’ my mother says
solemnly, ‘gone to come back no more.
You’ll put by your work now, man, and have your supper, and then you=
’ll
come up and sit beside your mother for a whiley, for soon you’ll be putting=
her
away in the kirk-yard.’
I hear such a little cry from near the door. <= o:p>
So my mother and I go up the stair together. ‘We have changed places,’ she says; ‘th=
at was
just how I used to help you up, but I’m the bairn now.’
She brings out the Testament again; it was alw=
ays
lying within reach; it is the lock of hair she left me when she died. And when she has read for a long time s=
he
‘gives me a look,’ as we say in the north, and I go out, to leave her alone
with God. She had been but a child=
when
her mother died, and so she fell early into the way of saying her prayers w=
ith
no earthly listener. Often and oft=
en I
have found her on her knees, but I always went softly away, closing the
door. I never heard her pray, but =
I know
very well how she prayed, and that, when that door was shut, there was not a
day in God’s sight between the worn woman and the little child.
And
sometimes I was her maid of all work.
It is early morn, and my mother has come
noiselessly into my room. I know i=
t is
she, though my eyes are shut, and I am only half awake. Perhaps I was dream=
ing
of her, for I accept her presence without surprise, as if in the awakening I
had but seen her go out at one door to come in at another. But she is speaking to herself.
‘I’m sweer to waken him—I doubt he was working
late—oh, that weary writing—no, I maunna waken him.’
I start up.
She is wringing her hands. =
‘What
is wrong?’ I cry, but I know before she answers. My sister is down with one of the heada=
ches against
which even she cannot fight, and my mother, who bears physical pain as if it
were a comrade, is most woebegone when her daughter is the sufferer. ‘And she winna let me go down the stair=
to
make a cup of tea for her,’ she groans.
‘I will soon make the tea, mother.’
‘Will you?’ she says eagerly. It is what she has come to me for, but =
‘It is
a pity to rouse you,’ she says.
‘And I will take charge of the house to-day, a=
nd
light the fires and wash the dishes—’
‘Na, oh no; no, I couldna ask that of you, and=
you
an author.’
‘It won’t be the first time, mother, since I w=
as
an author.’
‘More like the fiftieth!’ she says almost
gleefully, so I have begun well, for to keep up her spirits is the great th=
ing
to-day.
Knock at the door.
It is the baker. I take in =
the
bread, looking so sternly at him that he dare not smile.
Knock at the door.
It is the postman. (I hope he did not see that I had the lid of the
kettle in my other hand.)
Furious knocking in a remote part. This means that the author is in the co=
al
cellar.
Anon I carry two breakfasts upstairs in
triumph. I enter the bedroom like =
no
mere humdrum son, but after the manner of the Glasgow waiter. I must say more about him. He had been my mother’s one waiter, the=
only manservant
she ever came in contact with, and they had met in a Glasgow hotel which she
was eager to see, having heard of the monstrous things, and conceived them =
to
resemble country inns with another twelve bedrooms. I remember how she
beamed—yet tried to look as if it was quite an ordinary experience—when we
alighted at the hotel door, but though she said nothing I soon read
disappointment in her face. She kn=
ew how
I was exulting in having her there, so would not say a word to damp me, but=
I craftily
drew it out of her. No, she was ve=
ry
comfortable, and the house was grand beyond speech, but—but—where was he? he
had not been very hearty. ‘He’ was=
the
landlord; she had expected him to receive us at the door and ask if we were=
in
good health and how we had left the others, and then she would have asked h=
im
if his wife was well and how many children they had, after which we should =
all
have sat down together to dinner. =
Two
chambermaids came into her room and prepared it without a single word to her
about her journey or on any other subject, and when they had gone, ‘They are
two haughty misses,’ said my mother with spirit. But what she most resented=
was
the waiter with his swagger black suit and short quick steps and the ‘towel’
over his arm. Without so much as a=
‘Welcome
to Glasgow!’ he showed us to our seats, not the smallest acknowledgment of =
our
kindness in giving such munificent orders did we draw from him, he hovered
around the table as if it would be unsafe to leave us with his knives and f=
orks
(he should have seen her knives and forks), when we spoke to each other he
affected not to hear, we might laugh but this uppish fellow would not join =
in. We retired, crushed, and he had the fin=
al
impudence to open the door for us. But
though this hurt my mother at the time, the humour of our experiences filled
her on reflection, and in her own house she would describe them with unctio=
n, sometimes
to those who had been in many hotels, often to others who had been in none,=
and
whoever were her listeners she made them laugh, though not always at the sa=
me
thing.
So now when I enter the bedroom with the tray,=
on
my arm is that badge of pride, the towel; and I approach with prim steps to
inform Madam that breakfast is ready, and she puts on the society manner and
addresses me as ‘Sir,’ and asks with cruel sarcasm for what purpose (except=
to
boast) I carry the towel, and I say ‘Is there anything more I can do for
Madam?’ and Madam replies that there is one more thing I can do, and that i=
s,
eat her breakfast for her. But of =
this I
take no notice, for my object is to fire her with the spirit of the game, so
that she eats unwittingly.
Now that I have washed up the breakfast things=
I
should be at my writing, and I am anxious to be at it, as I have an idea in=
my
head, which, if it is of any value, has almost certainly been put there by
her. But dare I venture? I know that the house has not been prop=
erly
set going yet, there are beds to make, the exterior of the teapot is fair, =
but
suppose some one were to look inside?
What a pity I knocked over the flour-barrel! Can I hope that for once my mother will
forget to inquire into these matters? Is
my sister willing to let disorder reign until to-morrow? I determine to risk it. Perhaps I have been at work for half an=
hour
when I hear movements overhead. On=
e or
other of them is wondering why the house is so quiet. I rattle the tongs, but even this does =
not
satisfy them, so back into the desk go my papers, and now what you hear is =
not
the scrape of a pen but the rinsing of pots and pans, or I am making beds, =
and
making them thoroughly, because after I am gone my mother will come (I know
her) and look suspiciously beneath the coverlet.
The kitchen is now speckless, not an unwashed
platter in sight, unless you look beneath the table. I feel that I have earned time for an h=
our’s writing
at last, and at it I go with vigour. One
page, two pages, really I am making progress, when—was that a door
opening? But I have my mother’s li=
ght
step on the brain, so I ‘yoke’ again, and next moment she is beside me. She has not exactly left her room, she =
gives
me to understand; but suddenly a conviction had come to her that I was writ=
ing without
a warm mat at my feet. She carries=
one
in her hands. Now that she is here=
she
remains for a time, and though she is in the arm-chair by the fire, where s=
he
sits bolt upright (she loved to have cushions on the unused chairs, but
detested putting her back against them), and I am bent low over my desk, I =
know
that contentment and pity are struggling for possession of her face:
contentment wins when she surveys her room, pity when she looks at me. Every article of furniture, from the ch=
airs
that came into the world with me and have worn so much better, though I was=
new
and they were second-hand, to the mantle-border of fashionable design which=
she
sewed in her seventieth year, having picked up the stitch in half a lesson,=
has
its story of fight and attainment for her, hence her satisfaction; but she
sighs at sight of her son, dipping and tearing, and chewing the loathly pen=
.
‘Oh, that weary writing!’
In vain do I tell her that writing is as pleas=
ant
to me as ever was the prospect of a tremendous day’s ironing to her; that (=
to
some, though not to me) new chapters are as easy to turn out as new
bannocks. No, she maintains, for o=
ne
bannock is the marrows of another, while chapters—and then, perhaps, her ey=
es
twinkle, and says she saucily, ‘But, sal, you may be right, for sometimes y=
our
bannocks are as alike as mine!’
Or I may be roused from my writing by her cry =
that
I am making strange faces again. I=
t is
my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must
smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward =
or
given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have to stop writi=
ng
to undo the knot. I bow with him, =
eat with
him, and gnaw my moustache with him. If
the character be a lady with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly terrify you by
laughing exquisitely. One reads of the astounding versatility of an actor w=
ho
is stout and lean on the same evening, but what is he to the novelist who i=
s a
dozen persons within the hour? Mor=
ally,
I fear, we must deteriorate—but this is a subject I may wisely edge away fr=
om.
We always spoke to each other in broad Scotch =
(I
think in it still), but now and again she would use a word that was new to =
me,
or I might hear one of her contemporaries use it. Now is my opportunity to angle for its =
meaning. If I ask, boldly, what was chat word sh=
e used
just now, something like ‘bilbie’ or ‘silvendy’? she blushes, and says she
never said anything so common, or hoots! it is some auld-farrant word about=
which
she can tell me nothing. But if in=
the
course of conversation I remark casually, ‘Did he find bilbie?’ or ‘Was that
quite silvendy?’ (though the sense of the question is vague to me) she falls
into the trap, and the words explain themselves in her replies. Or maybe to-day she sees whither I am l=
eading
her, and such is her sensitiveness that she is quite hurt. The humour goes out of her face (to find
bilbie in some more silvendy spot), and her reproachful eyes—but now I am on
the arm of her chair, and we have made it up. Nevertheless, I shall get no more old-wo=
rld
Scotch out of her this forenoon, she weeds her talk determinedly, and it is=
as
great a falling away as when the mutch gives place to the cap.
I am off for my afternoon walk, and she has
promised to bar the door behind me and open it to none. When I return,—well, the door is still =
barred,
but she is looking both furtive and elated.
I should say that she is burning to tell me something, but cannot te=
ll
it without exposing herself. Has s=
he
opened the door, and if so, why? I=
don’t
ask, but I watch. It is she who is=
sly
now.
‘Have you been in the east room since you came
in?’ she asks, with apparent indifference.
‘No; why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I just thought you might have looked in.’=
‘Is there anything new there?’
‘I dinna say there is, but—but just go and see=
.’
‘There can’t be anything new if you kept the d=
oor
barred,’ I say cleverly.
This crushes her for a moment; but her eagerne=
ss
that I should see is greater than her fear.
I set off for the east room, and she follows, affecting humility, but
with triumph in her eye. How often=
those
little scenes took place! I was ne=
ver
told of the new purchase, I was lured into its presence, and then she waited
timidly for my start of surprise.
‘Do you see it?’ she says anxiously, and I see=
it,
and hear it, for this time it is a bran-new wicker chair, of the kind that
whisper to themselves for the first six months.
‘A going-about body was selling them in a cart=
,’
my mother begins, and what followed presents itself to my eyes before she c=
an
utter another word. Ten minutes at=
the
least did she stand at the door argy-bargying with that man. But it would be cruelty to scold a woma=
n so
uplifted.
‘Fifteen shillings he wanted,’ she cries, ‘but
what do you think I beat him down to?’
‘Seven and sixpence?’
She claps her hands with delight. ‘Four shillings, as I’m a living woman!=
’ she
crows: never was a woman fonder of a bargain.
I gaze at the purchase with the amazement expe=
cted
of me, and the chair itself crinkles and shudders to hear what it went for =
(or
is it merely chuckling at her?). ‘=
And
the man said it cost himself five shillings,’ my mother continues
exultantly. You would have thought=
her
the hardest person had not a knock on the wall summoned us about this time =
to my
sister’s side. Though in bed she h=
as
been listening, and this is what she has to say, in a voice that makes my
mother very indignant, ‘You drive a bargain!
I’m thinking ten shillings was nearer what you paid.’
‘Four shillings to a penny!’ says my mother. <= o:p>
‘I daresay,’ says my sister; ‘but after you pa=
id
him the money I heard you in the little bedroom press. What were you doing there?’
My mother winces.
‘I may have given him a present of an old topcoat,’ she falters. ‘He looked ill-happit. But that was after I made the bargain.’=
‘Were there bairns in the cart?’
‘There might have been a bit lassie in the car=
t.’
‘I thought as much. What did you give her? I heard you in the pantry.’
‘Four shillings was what I got that chair for,’
replies my mother firmly. If I don’t interfere there will be a coldness bet=
ween
them for at least a minute. ‘There=
is
blood on your finger,’ I say to my mother.
‘So there is,’ she says, concealing her hand. =
‘Blood!’ exclaims my sister anxiously, and then
with a cry of triumph, ‘I warrant it’s jelly.
You gave that lassie one of the jelly cans!’
The Glasgow waiter brings up tea, and presentl=
y my
sister is able to rise, and after a sharp fight I am expelled from the
kitchen. The last thing I do as ma=
id of
all work is to lug upstairs the clothes-basket which has just arrived with =
the
mangling. Now there is delicious l=
inen for
my mother to finger; there was always rapture on her face when the clothes-=
basket
came in; it never failed to make her once more the active genius of the
house. I may leave her now with her
sheets and collars and napkins and fronts.
Indeed, she probably orders me to go.
A son is all very well, but suppose he were to tread on that
counterpane!
My sister is but and I am ben—I mean she is in=
the
east end and I am in the west—tuts, tuts! let us get at the English of this=
by
striving: she is in the kitchen and I am at my desk in the parlour. I hope I may not be disturbed, for to-n=
ight I
must make my hero say ‘Darling,’ and it needs both privacy and concentratio=
n. In a word, let me admit (though I shoul=
d like
to beat about the bush) that I have sat down to a love-chapter. Too long has it been avoided, Albert has
called Marion ‘dear’ only as yet (between you and me these are not their re=
al
names), but though the public will probably read the word without blinking,=
it went
off in my hands with a bang. They =
tell
me—the Sassenach tell me—that in time I shall be able without a blush to ma=
ke
Albert say ‘darling,’ and even gather her up in his arms, but I begin to do=
ubt
it; the moment sees me as shy as ever; I still find it advisable to lock th=
e door,
and then—no witness save the dog—I ‘do’ it dourly with my teeth clenched, w=
hile
the dog retreats into the far corner and moans.
The bolder Englishman (I am told) will write a love-chapter and then=
go
out, quite coolly, to dinner, but such goings on are contrary to the Scotch=
nature;
even the great novelists dared not.
Conceive Mr. Stevenson left alone with a hero, a heroine, and a prop=
osal
impending (he does not know where to look).
Sir Walter in the same circumstances gets out of the room by making =
his
love-scenes take place between the end of one chapter and the beginning of =
the
next, but he could afford to do anything, and the small fry must e’en to th=
eir task,
moan the dog as he may. So I have =
yoked
to mine when, enter my mother, looking wistful.
‘I suppose you are terrible thrang,’ she says.=
‘Well, I am rather busy, but—what is it you wa=
nt
me to do?’
‘It would be a shame to ask you.’
‘Still, ask me.’
‘I am so terrified they may be filed.’
‘You want me to—?’
‘If you would just come up, and help me to fold
the sheets!’
The sheets are folded and I return to Albert.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> I lock the door, and at last I am bring=
ing my
hero forward nicely (my knee in the small of his back), when this startling
question is shot by my sister through the key-hole—
‘Where did you put the carrot-grater?’
It will all have to be done over again if I let
Albert go for a moment, so, gripping him hard, I shout indignantly that I h=
ave
not seen the carrot-grater.
‘Then what did you grate the carrots on?’ asks=
the
voice, and the door-handle is shaken just as I shake Albert.
‘On a broken cup,’ I reply with surprising
readiness, and I get to work again but am less engrossed, for a conviction
grows on me that I put the carrot-grater in the drawer of the sewing-machin=
e.
I am wondering whether I should confess or bra=
zen
it out, when I hear my sister going hurriedly upstairs. I have a presentiment that she has gone=
to
talk about me, and I basely open my door and listen.
‘Just look at that, mother!’
‘Is it a dish-cloth?’
‘That’s what it is now.’
‘Losh behears! it’s one of the new table-napki=
ns.’
‘That’s what it was. He has been polishing the kitchen grate=
with
it!’
(I remember!)
‘Woe’s me!
That is what comes of his not letting me budge from this room. O, it is a watery Sabbath when men take=
to
doing women’s work!’
‘It defies the face of clay, mother, to fathom
what makes him so senseless.’
‘Oh, it’s that weary writing.’
‘And the worst of it is he will talk to-morrow=
as
if he had done wonders.’
‘That’s the way with the whole clanjam-fray of
them.’
‘Yes, but as usual you will humour him, mother=
.’
‘Oh, well, it pleases him, you see,’ says my
mother, ‘and we can have our laugh when his door’s shut.’
‘He is most terribly handless.’
‘He is all that, but, poor soul, he does his
best.’
These
familiar initials are, I suppose, the best beloved in recent literature,
certainly they are the sweetest to me, but there was a time when my mother
could not abide them. She said ‘Th=
at
Stevenson man’ with a sneer, and, it was never easy to her to sneer. At thought of him her face would become
almost hard, which seems incredible, and she would knit her lips and fold h=
er arms,
and reply with a stiff ‘oh’ if you mentioned his aggravating name. In the novels we have a way of writing =
of our
heroine, ‘she drew herself up haughtily,’ and when mine draw themselves up
haughtily I see my mother thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson. He knew her opinion of him, and would wr=
ite,
‘My ears tingled yesterday; I sair doubt she has been miscalling me
again.’ But the more she miscalled=
him the
more he delighted in her, and she was informed of this, and at once said, ‘=
The
scoundrel!’ If you would know what=
was
his unpardonable crime, it was this: he wrote better books than mine.
I remember the day she found it out, which was
not, however, the day she admitted it.
That day, when I should have been at my work, she came upon me in the
kitchen, ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ beside me, but I was not reading: my he=
ad
lay heavy on the table, and to her anxious eyes, I doubt not, I was the pic=
ture
of woe. ‘Not writing!’ I echoed, n=
o, I
was not writing, I saw no use in ever trying to write again. And down, I suppose, went my head once
more. She misunderstood, and thoug=
ht the
blow had fallen; I had awakened to the discovery, always dreaded by her, th=
at I
had written myself dry; I was no better than an empty ink-bottle. She wrung her hands, but indignation ca=
me to
her with my explanation, which was that while R. L. S. was at it we others =
were
only ‘prentices cutting our fingers on his tools. ‘I could never thole his books,’ said m=
y mother
immediately, and indeed vindictively.
‘You have not read any of them,’ I reminded he=
r.
‘And never will,’ said she with spirit.
And I have no doubt that she called him a dark
character that very day. For weeks too, if not for months, she adhered to h=
er
determination not to read him, though I, having come to my senses and seen =
that
there is a place for the ‘prentice, was taking a pleasure, almost malicious=
, in
putting ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ in her way.
I would place it on her table so that it said good-morning to her wh=
en
she rose. She would frown, and car=
rying it
downstairs, as if she had it in the tongs, replace it on its book-shelf.
‘You have been sitting very quietly, mother.’ =
‘I always sit quietly, I never do anything, I’m
just a finished stocking.’
‘Have you been reading?’
‘Do I ever read at this time of day?’
‘What is that in your lap?’
‘Just my apron.’
‘Is that a book beneath the apron?’
‘It might be a book.’
‘Let me see.’
‘Go away with you to your work.’
But I lifted the apron. ‘Why, it’s “The Master of Ballantrae!”’=
I exclaimed, shocked.
‘So it is!’ said my mother, equally
surprised. But I looked sternly at=
her,
and perhaps she blushed.
‘Well what do you think: not nearly equal to
mine?’ said I with humour.
‘Nothing like them,’ she said determinedly.
‘Not a bit,’ said I, though whether with a smi=
le
or a groan is immaterial; they would have meant the same thing. Should I put the book back on its shelf=
? I asked, and she replied that I could p=
ut it
wherever I liked for all she cared, so long as I took it out of her sight (=
the implication
was that it had stolen on to her lap while she was looking out at the
window). My behaviour may seem sma=
ll,
but I gave her a last chance, for I said that some people found it a book t=
here
was no putting down until they reached the last page.
‘I’m no that kind,’ replied my mother.
Nevertheless our old game with the haver of a
thing, as she called it, was continued, with this difference, that it was n=
ow
she who carried the book covertly upstairs, and I who replaced it on the sh=
elf,
and several times we caught each other in the act, but not a word said eith=
er
of us; we were grown self-conscious.
Much of the play no doubt I forget, but one incident I remember clea=
rly. She had come down to sit beside me whil=
e I
wrote, and sometimes, when I looked up, her eye was not on me, but on the s=
helf
where ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ stood inviting her. Mr. Stevenson’s books =
are
not for the shelf, they are for the hand; even when you lay them down, let =
it
be on the table for the next comer.
Being the most sociable that man has penned in our time, they feel v=
ery
lonely up there in a stately row. I
think their eye is on you the moment you enter the room, and so you are dra=
wn
to look at them, and you take a volume down with the impulse that induces o=
ne
to unchain the dog. And the result=
is
not dissimilar, for in another moment you two are at play. Is there any oth=
er
modern writer who gets round you in this way?
Well, he had given my mother the look which in the ball-room means, =
‘Ask
me for this waltz,’ and she ettled to do it, but felt that her more dutiful=
course
was to sit out the dance with this other less entertaining partner. I wrote on doggedly, but could hear the
whispering.
‘Am I to be a wall-flower?’ asked James Durie
reproachfully. (It must have been
leap-year.)
‘Speak lower,’ replied my mother, with an unea=
sy
look at me.
‘Pooh!’ said James contemptuously, ‘that
kail-runtle!’
‘I winna have him miscalled,’ said my mother,
frowning.
‘I am done with him,’ said James (wiping his c=
ane
with his cambric handkerchief), and his sword clattered deliciously (I cann=
ot
think this was accidental), which made my mother sigh. Like the man he was, he followed up his
advantage with a comparison that made me dip viciously.
‘A prettier sound that,’ said he, clanking his
sword again, ‘than the clack-clack of your young friend’s shuttle.’
‘Whist!’ cried my mother, who had seen me dip.=
‘Then give me your arm,’ said James, lowering =
his
voice.
‘I dare not,’ answered my mother. ‘He’s so touchy about you.’
‘Come, come,’ he pressed her, ‘you are certain=
to
do it sooner or later, so why not now?’
‘Wait till he has gone for his walk,’ said my
mother; ‘and, forbye that, I’m ower old to dance with you.’
‘How old are you?’ he inquired.
‘You’re gey an’ pert!’ cried my mother.
‘Are you seventy?’
‘Off and on,’ she admitted.
‘Pooh,’ he said, ‘a mere girl!’
She replied instantly, ‘I’m no’ to be catched =
with
chaff’; but she smiled and rose as if he had stretched out his hand and got=
her
by the finger-tip.
After that they whispered so low (which they c=
ould
do as they were now much nearer each other) that I could catch only one
remark. It came from James, and se=
ems to
show the tenor of their whisperings, for his words were, ‘Easily enough, if=
you
slip me beneath your shawl.’
That is what she did, and furthermore she left=
the
room guiltily, muttering something about redding up the drawers. I suppose I smiled wanly to myself, or
conscience must have been nibbling at my mother, for in less than five minu=
tes
she was back, carrying her accomplice openly, and she thrust him with posit=
ive
viciousness into the place where my Stevenson had lost a tooth (as the writ=
er
whom he most resembled would have said).
And then like a good mother she took up one of her son’s books and r=
ead
it most determinedly. It had becom=
e a
touching incident to me, and I remember how we there and then agreed upon a
compromise she was to read the enticing thing just to convince herself of i=
ts inferiority.
‘The Master of Ballantrae’ is not the best. That is like knowing that you will fall=
in
love to-morrow morning. With one w=
ord,
by drawing one mournful face, I could have got my mother to abjure the
jam-shelf—nay, I might have managed it by merely saying that she had enjoyed
‘The Master of Ballantrae.’ For yo=
u must
remember that she only read it to persuade herself (and me) of its
unworthiness, and that the reason she wanted to read the others was to get
further proof. All this she made p=
lain
to me, eyeing me a little anxiously the while, and of course I accepted the
explanation. Alan is the biggest c=
hild
of them all, and I doubt not that she thought so, but curiously enough her
views of him are among the things I have forgotten. But how enamoured she w=
as
of ‘Treasure Island,’ and how faithful she tried to be to me all the time s=
he
was reading it! I had to put my ha=
nds over
her eyes to let her know that I had entered the room, and even then she mig=
ht
try to read between my fingers, coming to herself presently, however, to say
‘It’s a haver of a book.’
‘Those pirate stories are so uninteresting,’ I
would reply without fear, for she was too engrossed to see through me. ‘Do you think you will finish this one?=
’
‘I may as well go on with it since I have begun
it,’ my mother says, so slyly that my sister and I shake our heads at each
other to imply, ‘Was there ever such a woman!’
‘There are none of those one-legged scoundrels=
in
my books,’ I say.
‘Better without them,’ she replies promptly. <= o:p>
‘I wonder, mother, what it is about the man th=
at
so infatuates the public?’
‘He takes no hold of me,’ she insists. ‘I would a hantle rather read your book=
s.’
I offer obligingly to bring one of them to her,
and now she looks at me suspiciously.
‘You surely believe I like yours best,’ she says with instant anxiet=
y,
and I soothe her by assurances, and retire advising her to read on, just to=
see
if she can find out how he misleads the public. ‘Oh, I may take a look at it
again by-and-by,’ she says indifferently, but nevertheless the probability =
is
that as the door shuts the book opens, as if by some mechanical
contrivance. I remember how she re=
ad ‘Treasure
Island,’ holding it close to the ribs of the fire (because she could not sp=
are
a moment to rise and light the gas), and how, when bed-time came, and we
coaxed, remonstrated, scolded, she said quite fiercely, clinging to the boo=
k,
‘I dinna lay my head on a pillow this night till I see how that laddie got =
out
of the barrel.’
After this, I think, he was as bewitching as t=
he
laddie in the barrel to her—Was he not always a laddie in the barrel himsel=
f,
climbing in for apples while we all stood around, like gamins, waiting for a
bite? He was the spirit of boyhood
tugging at the skirts of this old world of ours and compelling it to come b=
ack
and play. And I suppose my mother =
felt this,
as so many have felt it: like others she was a little scared at first to fi=
nd
herself skipping again, with this masterful child at the rope, but soon she
gave him her hand and set off with him for the meadow, not an apology betwe=
en
the two of them for the author left behind.
But near to the end did she admit (in words) that he had a way with =
him
which was beyond her son. ‘Silk and
sacking, that is what we are,’ she was informed, to which she would reply
obstinately, ‘Well, then, I prefer sacking.’
‘But if he had been your son?’
‘But he is not.’
‘You wish he were?’
‘I dinna deny but what I could have found room=
for
him.’
And still at times she would smear him with the
name of black (to his delight when he learned the reason). That was when some podgy red-sealed blu=
e-crossed
letter arrived from Vailima, inviting me to journey thither. (His directions
were, ‘You take the boat at San Francisco, and then my place is the second =
to
the left.’) Even London seemed to =
her to
carry me so far away that I often took a week to the journey (the first six
days in getting her used to the idea), and these letters terrified her. It was not the finger of Jim Hawkins sh=
e now
saw beckoning me across the seas, it was John Silver, waving a crutch. Seldom, I believe, did I read straight
through one of these Vailima letters; when in the middle I suddenly remembe=
red
who was upstairs and what she was probably doing, and I ran to her, three s=
teps
at a jump, to find her, lips pursed, hands folded, a picture of gloom.
‘I have a letter from—’
‘So I have heard.’
‘Would you like to hear it?’
‘No.’
‘Can you not abide him?’
‘I cauna thole him.’
‘Is he a black?’
‘He is all that.’
Well, Vailima was the one spot on earth I had =
any
great craving to visit, but I think she always knew I would never leave
her. Sometime, she said, she shoul=
d like
me to go, but not until she was laid away.
‘And how small I have grown this last winter. Look at my wrists. It canna be long now.’ No, I never thought of going, was never
absent for a day from her without reluctance, and never walked so quickly as
when I was going back. In the mean=
time
that happened which put an end for ever to my scheme of travel. I shall never go up the Road of Loving =
Hearts
now, on ‘a wonderful clear night of stars,’ to meet the man coming toward m=
e on
a horse. It is still a wonderful c=
lear
night of stars, but the road is empty.
So I never saw the dear king of us all.
But before he had written books he was in my part of the country wit=
h a
fishing-wand in his hand, and I like to think that I was the boy who met him
that day by Queen Margaret’s burn, where the rowans are, and busked a fly f=
or him,
and stood watching, while his lithe figure rose and fell as he cast and hin=
ted
back from the crystal waters of Noran-side.
I was
sitting at my desk in London when a telegram came announcing that my mother=
was
again dangerously ill, and I seized my hat and hurried to the station. It is not a memory of one night only. A score of times, I am sure, I was call=
ed
north thus suddenly, and reached our little town trembling, head out at
railway-carriage window for a glance at a known face which would answer the
question on mine. These illnesses =
came
as regularly as the backend of the year, but were less regular in going, an=
d through
them all, by night and by day, I see my sister moving so unwearyingly, so
lovingly, though with failing strength, that I bow my head in reverence for
her. She was wearing herself done.=
The doctor advised us to engage a nurse=
, but
the mere word frightened my mother, and we got between her and the door as =
if
the woman was already on the stair. To have a strange woman in my mother’s
room—you who are used to them cannot conceive what it meant to us.
Then we must have a servant. This seemed only less horrible. My father turned up his sleeves and clu=
tched
the besom. I tossed aside my paper=
s, and
was ready to run the errands. He
answered the door, I kept the fires going, he gave me a lesson in cooking, I
showed him how to make beds, one of us wore an apron. It was not for long. I was led to my desk, the newspaper was=
put
into my father’s hand. ‘But a serv=
ant!’
we cried, and would have fallen to again.
‘No servant, comes into this house,’ said my sister quite fiercely, =
and,
oh, but my mother was relieved to hear her! There were many such scenes, a =
year
of them, I daresay, before we yielded.
I cannot say which of us felt it most. In London I was used to servants, and in
moments of irritation would ring for them furiously, though doubtless my ma=
nner
changed as they opened the door. I=
have
even held my own with gentlemen in plush, giving one my hat, another my sti=
ck,
and a third my coat, and all done with little more trouble than I should ha=
ve expended
in putting the three articles on the chair myself. But this bold deed, and other big thing=
s of
the kind, I did that I might tell my mother of them afterwards, while I sat=
on
the end of her bed, and her face beamed with astonishment and mirth.
From my earliest days I had seen servants. The manse had a servant, the bank had
another; one of their uses was to pounce upon, and carry away in stately ma=
nner,
certain naughty boys who played with me.
The banker did not seem really great to me, but his servant—oh yes.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Her boots cheeped all the way down the =
church
aisle; it was common report that she had flesh every day for her dinner;
instead of meeting her lover at the pump she walked him into the country, a=
nd
he returned with wild roses in his buttonhole, his hand up to hide them, an=
d on
his face the troubled look of those who know that if they take this lady th=
ey
must give up drinking from the saucer for evermore. For the lovers were really common men, =
until
she gave them that glance over the shoulder which, I have noticed, is the f=
atal
gift of servants.
According to legend we once had a servant—in my
childhood I could show the mark of it on my forehead, and even point her ou=
t to
other boys, though she was now merely a wife with a house of her own. But even while I boasted I doubted. Reduced to life-size she may have been =
but a
woman who came in to help. I shall=
say
no more about her, lest some one comes forward to prove that she went home =
at
night.
Never shall I forget my first servant. I was eight or nine, in velveteen, diam=
ond
socks (‘Cross your legs when they look at you,’ my mother had said, ‘and put
your thumb in your pocket and leave the top of your handkerchief showing’),=
and
I had travelled by rail to visit a relative.
He had a servant, and as I was to be his guest she must be my servant
also for the time being—you may be sure I had got my mother to put this pla=
inly
before me ere I set off. My relati=
ve met
me at the station, but I wasted no time in hoping I found him well. I did not even cross my legs for him, so
eager was I to hear whether she was still there. A sister greeted me at the door, but I =
chafed
at having to be kissed; at once I made for the kitchen, where, I knew, they
reside, and there she was, and I crossed my legs and put one thumb in my
pocket, and the handkerchief was showing.
Afterwards I stopped strangers on the highway with an offer to show =
her
to them through the kitchen window, and I doubt not the first letter I ever
wrote told my mother what they are like when they are so near that you can =
put
your fingers into them.
But now when we could have servants for oursel=
ves
I shrank from the thought. It woul=
d not
be the same house; we should have to dissemble; I saw myself speaking Engli=
sh
the long day through. You only kno=
w the shell
of a Scot until you have entered his home circle; in his office, in clubs, =
at
social gatherings where you and he seem to be getting on so well he is real=
ly a
house with all the shutters closed and the door locked. He is not opaque of set purpose, often =
it is
against his will—it is certainly against mine, I try to keep my shutters op=
en
and my foot in the door but they will bang to.
In many ways my mother was as reticent as myself, though her manners
were as gracious as mine were rough (in vain, alas! all the honest oiling of
them), and my sister was the most reserved of us all; you might at times se=
e a
light through one of my chinks: she was double-shuttered. Now, it seems to be a law of nature tha=
t we
must show our true selves at some time, and as the Scot must do it at home,=
and
squeeze a day into an hour, what follows is that there he is self-revealing=
in
the superlative degree, the feelings so long dammed up overflow, and thus a
Scotch family are probably better acquainted with each other, and more igno=
rant
of the life outside their circle, than any other family in the world. And as knowledge is sympathy, the affec=
tion existing
between them is almost painful in its intensity; they have not more to give
than their neighbours, but it is bestowed upon a few instead of being
distributed among many; they are reputed niggardly, but for family affectio=
n at
least they pay in gold. In this, I=
believe,
we shall find the true explanation why Scotch literature, since long before=
the
days of Burns, has been so often inspired by the domestic hearth, and has t=
reated
it with a passionate understanding.
Must a woman come into our house and discover =
that
I was not such a dreary dog as I had the reputation of being? Was I to be seen at last with the veil =
of
dourness lifted? My company voice =
is so
low and unimpressive that my first remark is merely an intimation that I am
about to speak (like the whir of the clock before it strikes): must it be r=
evealed
that I had another voice, that there was one door I never opened without
leaving my reserve on the mat? Ah,=
that
room, must its secrets be disclosed? So
joyous they were when my mother was well, no wonder we were merry. Again and again she had been given back=
to
us; it was for the glorious to-day we thanked God; in our hearts we knew an=
d in
our prayers confessed that the fill of delight had been given us, whatever =
might
befall. We had not to wait till al=
l was
over to know its value; my mother used to say, ‘We never understand how lit=
tle
we need in this world until we know the loss of it,’ and there can be few t=
ruer
sayings, but during her last years we exulted daily in the possession of he=
r as
much as we can exult in her memory. No
wonder, I say, that we were merry, but we liked to show it to God alone, an=
d to
Him only our agony during those many night-alarms, when lights flickered in=
the
house and white faces were round my mother’s bedside. Not for other eyes those long vigils wh=
en,
night about, we sat watching, nor the awful nights when we stood together,
teeth clenched—waiting—it must be now.
And it was not then; her hand became cooler, her breathing more easy;
she smiled to us. Once more I coul=
d work
by snatches, and was glad, but what was the result to me compared to the jo=
y of
hearing that voice from the other room?
There lay all the work I was ever proud of, the rest is but honest c=
raftsmanship
done to give her coal and food and softer pillows. My thousand letters that she so careful=
ly
preserved, always sleeping with the last beneath the sheet, where one was f=
ound
when she died—they are the only writing of mine of which I shall ever
boast. I would not there had been =
one
less though I could have written an immortal book for it.
How my sister toiled—to prevent a stranger’s
getting any footing in the house! =
And
how, with the same object, my mother strove to ‘do for herself’ once more.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> She pretended that she was always well =
now,
and concealed her ailments so craftily that we had to probe for them:—
‘I think you are not feeling well to-day?’
‘I am perfectly well.’
‘Where is the pain?’
‘I have no pain to speak of.’
‘Is it at your heart?’
‘No.’
‘Is your breathing hurting you?’
‘Not it.’
‘Do you feel those stounds in your head again?=
’
‘No, no, I tell you there is nothing the matter
with me.’
‘Have you a pain in your side?’
‘Really, it’s most provoking I canna put my ha=
nd
to my side without your thinking I have a pain there.’
‘You have a pain in your side!’
‘I might have a pain in my side.’
‘And you were trying to hide it! Is it very painful?’
‘It’s—it’s no so bad but what I can bear it.’ =
Which of these two gave in first I cannot tell,
though to me fell the duty of persuading them, for whichever she was she
rebelled as soon as the other showed signs of yielding, so that sometimes I=
had
two converts in the week but never both on the same day. I would take them separately, and press=
the
one to yield for the sake of the other, but they saw so easily through my
artifice. My mother might go brave=
ly to
my sister and say, ‘I have been thinking it over, and I believe I would lik=
e a
servant fine—once we got used to her.’
‘Did he tell you to say that?’ asks my sister
sharply.
‘I say it of my own free will.’
‘He put you up to it, I am sure, and he told y=
ou
not to let on that you did it to lighten my work.’
‘Maybe he did, but I think we should get one.’=
‘Not for my sake,’ says my sister obstinately,=
and
then my mother comes ben to me to say delightedly, ‘She winna listen to
reason!’
But at last a servant was engaged; we might be
said to be at the window, gloomily waiting for her now, and it was with such
words as these that we sought to comfort each other and ourselves:—
‘She will go early to her bed.’
‘She needna often be seen upstairs.’
‘We’ll set her to the walking every day.’
‘There will be a many errands for her to run.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> We’ll tell her to take her time over th=
em.’
‘Three times she shall go to the kirk every
Sabbath, and we’ll egg her on to attending the lectures in the hall.’
‘She is sure to have friends in the town. We’ll let her visit them often.’
‘If she dares to come into your room, mother!’=
‘Mind this, every one of you, servant or no
servant, I fold all the linen mysel.’
‘She shall not get cleaning out the east room.=
’
‘Nor putting my chest of drawers in order.’
‘Nor tidying up my manuscripts.’
‘I hope she’s a reader, though. You could set her down with a book, and=
then
close the door canny on her.’
And so on.
Was ever servant awaited so apprehensively? And then she came—at an anxious time, t=
oo,
when her worth could be put to the proof at once—and from first to last she=
was
a treasure. I know not what we sho=
uld
have done without her.
When =
it was
known that I had begun another story my mother might ask what it was to be
about this time.
‘Fine we can guess who it is about,’ my sister
would say pointedly.
‘Maybe you can guess, but it is beyond me,’ sa=
ys
my mother, with the meekness of one who knows that she is a dull person.
My sister scorned her at such times. ‘What woman is in all his books?’ she w=
ould
demand.
‘I’m sure I canna say,’ replies my mother
determinedly. ‘I thought the women=
were
different every time.’
‘Mother, I wonder you can be so audacious! Fine you know what woman I mean.’
‘How can I know?
What woman is it? You shoul=
d bear
in mind that I hinna your cleverness’ (they were constantly giving each oth=
er
little knocks).
‘I won’t give you the satisfaction of saying h=
er
name. But this I will say, it is h=
igh
time he was keeping her out of his books.’
And then as usual my mother would give herself
away unconsciously. ‘That is what =
I tell
him,’ she says chuckling, ‘and he tries to keep me out, but he canna; it’s =
more
than he can do!’
On an evening after my mother had gone to bed,=
the
first chapter would be brought upstairs, and I read, sitting at the foot of=
the
bed, while my sister watched to make my mother behave herself, and my father
cried H’sh! when there were interruptions.
All would go well at the start, the reflections were accepted with a
little nod of the head, the descriptions of scenery as ruts on the road that
must be got over at a walking pace (my mother did not care for scenery, and
that is why there is so little of it in my books). But now I am reading too quickly, a lit=
tle apprehensively,
because I know that the next paragraph begins with—let us say with, ‘Along =
this
path came a woman’: I had intended to rush on here in a loud bullying voice,
but ‘Along this path came a woman’ I read, and stop. Did I hear a faint sound from the other=
end
of the bed? Perhaps I did not; I m=
ay
only have been listening for it, but I falter and look up. My sister and I =
look
sternly at my mother. She bites her
under-lip and clutches the bed with both hands, really she is doing her best
for me, but first comes a smothered gurgling sound, then her hold on hersel=
f relaxes
and she shakes with mirth.
‘That’s a way to behave!’ cries my sister.
‘I cannot help it,’ my mother gasps.
‘And there’s nothing to laugh at.’
‘It’s that woman,’ my mother explains
unnecessarily.
‘Maybe she’s not the woman you think her,’ I s=
ay,
crushed.
‘Maybe not,’ says my mother doubtfully. ‘What was her name?’
‘Her name,’ I answer with triumph, ‘was not Ma=
rgaret’;
but this makes her ripple again. ‘=
I have
so many names nowadays,’ she mutters.
‘H’sh!’ says my father, and the reading is
resumed.
Perhaps the woman who came along the path was =
of
tall and majestic figure, which should have shown my mother that I had
contrived to start my train without her this time. But it did not.
‘What are you laughing at now?’ says my sister
severely. ‘Do you not hear that sh=
e was
a tall, majestic woman?’
‘It’s the first time I ever heard it said of h=
er,’
replies my mother.
‘But she is.’
‘Ke fy, havers!’
‘The book says it.’
‘There will be a many queer things in the
book. What was she wearing?’
I have not described her clothes. ‘That’s a mistake,’ says my mother. ‘Wh=
en I
come upon a woman in a book, the first thing I want to know about her is
whether she was good-looking, and the second, how she was put on.’
The woman on the path was eighteen years of ag=
e,
and of remarkable beauty.
‘That settles you,’ says my sister.
‘I was no beauty at eighteen,’ my mother admit=
s, but
here my father interferes unexpectedly.
‘There wasna your like in this countryside at eighteen,’ says he
stoutly.
‘Pooh!’ says she, well pleased.
‘Were you plain, then?’ we ask.
‘Sal,’ she replies briskly, ‘I was far from
plain.’
‘H’sh!’
Perhaps in the next chapter this lady (or anot=
her)
appears in a carriage.
‘I assure you we’re mounting in the world,’ I =
hear
my mother murmur, but I hurry on without looking up. The lady lives in a house where there a=
re footmen—but
the footmen have come on the scene too hurriedly. ‘This is more than I can stand,’ gasps =
my
mother, and just as she is getting the better of a fit of laughter, ‘Footma=
n,
give me a drink of water,’ she cries, and this sets her off again. Often the readings had to end abruptly
because her mirth brought on violent fits of coughing.
Sometimes I read to my sister alone, and she
assured me that she could not see my mother among the women this time. This she said to humour me. Presently s=
he
would slip upstairs to announce triumphantly, ‘You are in again!’
Or in the small hours I might make a confidant=
of
my father, and when I had finished reading he would say thoughtfully, ‘That
lassie is very natural. Some of th=
e ways
you say she had—your mother had them just the same. Did you ever notice what an extraordina=
ry
woman your mother is?’
Then would I seek my mother for comfort. She was the more ready to give it becau=
se of
her profound conviction that if I was found out—that is, if readers discove=
red
how frequently and in how many guises she appeared in my books—the affair w=
ould
become a public scandal.
‘You see Jess is not really you,’ I begin
inquiringly.
‘Oh no, she is another kind of woman altogethe=
r,’
my mother says, and then spoils the compliment by adding naîvely, ‘She had =
but
two rooms and I have six.’
I sigh.
‘Without counting the pantry, and it’s a great big pantry,’ she mutt=
ers.
This was not the sort of difference I could
greatly plume myself upon, and honesty would force me to say, ‘As far as th=
at
goes, there was a time when you had but two rooms yourself—’
‘That’s long since,’ she breaks in. ‘I began with an up-the-stair, but I al=
ways
had it in my mind—I never mentioned it, but there it was—to have the
down-the-stair as well. Ay, and I’=
ve had
it this many a year.’
‘Still, there is no denying that Jess had the =
same
ambition.’
‘She had, but to her two-roomed house she had =
to
stick all her born days. Was that like me?’
‘No, but she wanted—’
‘She wanted, and I wanted, but I got and she
didna. That’s the difference betwi=
xt her
and me.’
‘If that is all the difference, it is little
credit I can claim for having created her.’
My mother sees that I need soothing. ‘That is far from being all the differe=
nce,’
she would say eagerly. ‘There’s my=
silk,
for instance. Though I say it mysel, there’s not a better silk in the valle=
y of
Strathmore. Had Jess a silk of any
kind—not to speak of a silk like that?’
‘Well, she had no silk, but you remember how s=
he
got that cloak with beads.’
‘An eleven and a bit! Hoots, what was that to boast of! I tell you, every single yard of my silk
cost—’
‘Mother, that is the very way Jess spoke about=
her
cloak!’
She lets this pass, perhaps without hearing it,
for solicitude about her silk has hurried her to the wardrobe where it hang=
s.
‘Ah, mother, I am afraid that was very like Je=
ss!’
‘How could it be like her when she didna even =
have
a wardrobe? I tell you what, if th=
ere
had been a real Jess and she had boasted to me about her cloak with beads, I
would have said to her in a careless sort of voice, “Step across with me, J=
ess
and I’ll let you see something that is hanging in my wardrobe.” That would have lowered her pride!’
‘I don’t believe that is what you would have d=
one,
mother.’
Then a sweeter expression would come into her
face. ‘No,’ she would say reflecti=
vely,
‘it’s not.’
‘What would you have done? I think I know.’
‘You canna know.
But I’m thinking I would have called to mind that she was a poor wom=
an,
and ailing, and terrible windy about her cloak, and I would just have said =
it
was a beauty and that I wished I had one like it.’
‘Yes, I am certain that is what you would have
done. But oh, mother, that is just=
how
Jess would have acted if some poorer woman than she had shown her a new sha=
wl.’
‘Maybe, but though I hadna boasted about my si=
lk I
would have wanted to do it.’
‘Just as Jess would have been fidgeting to show
off her eleven and a bit!’
It seems advisable to jump to another book; no=
t to
my first, because—well, as it was my first there would naturally be somethi=
ng
of my mother in it, and not to the second, as it was my first novel and not=
much
esteemed even in our family. (But =
the
little touches of my mother in it are not so bad.) Let us try the story about the minister=
.
My mother’s first remark is decidedly
damping. ‘Many a time in my young =
days,’
she says, ‘I played about the Auld Licht manse, but I little thought I shou=
ld
live to be the mistress of it!’
‘But Margaret is not you.’
‘N-no, oh no.
She had a very different life from mine.
I never let on to a soul that she is me!’
‘She was not meant to be you when I began. Mother, what a way you have of coming
creeping in!’
‘You should keep better watch on yourself.’
‘Perhaps if I had called Margaret by some other
name—’
‘I should have seen through her just the same.=
As soon as I heard she was the mother I =
began
to laugh. In some ways, though, sh=
e’s
no’ so very like me. She was long =
in
finding out about Babbie. I’se uph=
aud I
should have been quicker.’
‘Babbie, you see, kept close to the garden-wal=
l.’
‘It’s not the wall up at the manse that would =
have
hidden her from me.’
‘She came out in the dark.’
‘I’m thinking she would have found me looking =
for
her with a candle.’
‘And Gavin was secretive.’
‘That would have put me on my mettle.’
‘She never suspected anything.’
‘I wonder at her.’
But my new heroine is to be a child. What has madam to say to that?
A child!
Yes, she has something to say even to that. ‘This beats all!’ are the words.
‘Come, come, mother, I see what you are thinki=
ng,
but I assure you that this time—’
‘Of course not,’ she says soothingly, ‘oh no, =
she
canna be me’; but anon her real thoughts are revealed by the artless remark=
, ‘I
doubt, though, this is a tough job you have on hand—it is so long since I w=
as a
bairn.’
We came very close to each other in those
talks. ‘It is a queer thing,’ she =
would
say softly, ‘that near everything you write is about this bit place. You little expected that when you began=
. I mind well the time when it never ente=
red
your head, any more than mine, that you could write a page about our squares
and wynds. I wonder how it has come
about?’
There was a time when I could not have answered
that question, but that time had long passed.
‘I suppose, mother, it was because you were most at home in your own
town, and there was never much pleasure to me in writing of people who could
not have known you, nor of squares and wynds you never passed through, nor =
of a
country-side where you never carried your father’s dinner in a flagon. There is scarce a house in all my books=
where
I have not seemed to see you a thousand times, bending over the fireplace or
winding up the clock.’
‘And yet you used to be in such a quandary bec=
ause
you knew nobody you could make your women-folk out of! Do you mind that, and how we both laugh=
ed at
the notion of your having to make them out of me?’
‘I remember.’
‘And now you’ve gone back to my father’s
time. It’s more than sixty years s=
ince I
carried his dinner in a flagon through the long parks of Kinnordy.’
‘I often go into the long parks, mother, and s=
it
on the stile at the edge of the wood till I fancy I see a little girl coming
toward me with a flagon in her hand.’
‘Jumping the burn (I was once so proud of my
jumps!) and swinging the flagon round so quick that what was inside hadna t=
ime
to fall out. I used to wear a mage=
nta
frock and a white pinafore. Did I =
ever
tell you that?’
‘Mother, the little girl in my story wears a
magenta frock and a white pinafore.’
‘You minded that!
But I’m thinking it wasna a lassie in a pinafore you saw in the long
parks of Kinnordy, it was just a gey done auld woman.’
‘It was a lassie in a pinafore, mother, when s=
he
was far away, but when she came near it was a gey done auld woman.’
‘And a fell ugly one!’
‘The most beautiful one I shall ever see.’
‘I wonder to hear you say it. Look at my wrinkled auld face.’
‘It is the sweetest face in all the world.’
‘See how the rings drop off my poor wasted
finger.’
‘There will always be someone nigh, mother, to=
put
them on again.’
‘Ay, will there!
Well I know it. Do you mind=
how
when you were but a bairn you used to say, “Wait till I’m a man, and you’ll
never have a reason for greeting again?”’
I remembered.
‘You used to come running into the house to sa=
y,
“There’s a proud dame going down the Marywellbrae in a cloak that is black =
on
one side and white on the other; wait till I’m a man, and you’ll have one t=
he
very same.” And when I lay on gey =
hard
beds you said, “When I’m a man you’ll lie on feathers.” You saw nothing bonny, you never heard =
of my
setting my heart on anything, but what you flung up your head and cried, “W=
ait till
I’m a man.” You fair shamed me bef=
ore
the neighbours, and yet I was windy, too.
And now it has all come true like a dream. I can call to mind not one little thing=
I
ettled for in my lusty days that hasna been put into my hands in my auld ag=
e; I
sit here useless, surrounded by the gratification of all my wishes and all =
my
ambitions, and at times I’m near terrified, for it’s as if God had mista’en=
me
for some other woman.’
‘Your hopes and ambitions were so simple,’ I w=
ould
say, but she did not like that. ‘T=
hey
werena that simple,’ she would answer, flushing.
I am reluctant to leave those happy days, but =
the
end must be faced, and as I write I seem to see my mother growing smaller a=
nd
her face more wistful, and still she lingers with us, as if God had said,
‘Child of mine, your time has come, be not afraid.’ And she was not afraid, but still she
lingered, and He waited, smiling. I
never read any of that last book to her; when it was finished she was too h=
eavy
with years to follow a story. To m=
e this
was as if my book must go out cold into the world (like all that may come a=
fter
it from me), and my sister, who took more thought for others and less for
herself than any other human being I have known, saw this, and by some means
unfathomable to a man coaxed my mother into being once again the woman she =
had
been. On a day but three weeks bef=
ore
she died my father and I were called softly upstairs. My mother was sitting bolt upright, as =
she
loved to sit, in her old chair by the window, with a manuscript in her
hands. But she was looking about h=
er
without much understanding. ‘Just =
to
please him,’ my sister whispered, and then in a low, trembling voice my mot=
her
began to read. I looked at my
sister. Tears of woe were stealing=
down
her face. Soon the reading became =
very
slow and stopped. After a pause, ‘=
There
was something you were to say to him,’ my sister reminded her. ‘Luck,’ muttered a voice as from the de=
ad,
‘luck.’ And then the old smile cam=
e running
to her face like a lamp-lighter, and she said to me, ‘I am ower far gone to
read, but I’m thinking I am in it again!’
My father put her Testament in her hands, and it fell open—as it alw=
ays
does—at the Fourteenth of John. Sh=
e made
an effort to read but could not.
Suddenly she stooped and kissed the broad page. ‘Will that do instead?’ she asked.
For y=
ears I
had been trying to prepare myself for my mother’s death, trying to foresee =
how
she would die, seeing myself when she was dead. Even then I knew it was a v=
ain
thing I did, but I am sure there was no morbidness in it. I hoped I should be with her at the end=
, not
as the one she looked at last but as him from whom she would turn only to l=
ook upon
her best-beloved, not my arm but my sister’s should be round her when she d=
ied,
not my hand but my sister’s should close her eyes. I knew that I might reach her too late;=
I saw
myself open a door where there was none to greet me, and go up the old stair
into the old room. But what I did =
not
foresee was that which happened. I
little thought it could come about that I should climb the old stair, and p=
ass
the door beyond which my mother lay dead, and enter another room first, and=
go
on my knees there.
My mother’s favourite paraphrase is one known =
in
our house as David’s because it was the last he learned to repeat. It was also the last thing she read—
Ar=
t thou
afraid his power shall fail When
comes thy evil day? And can an
all-creating arm Grow weary or =
decay?
I heard her voice gain strength as she read it=
, I
saw her timid face take courage, but when came my evil day, then at the
dawning, alas for me, I was afraid.
In those last weeks, though we did not know it=
, my
sister was dying on her feet. For =
many
years she had been giving her life, a little bit at a time, for another yea=
r,
another month, latterly for another day, of her mother, and now she was worn
out. ‘I’ll never leave you,
mother.’—‘Fine I know you’ll never leave me.’
I thought that cry so pathetic at the time, but I was not to know its
full significance until it was only the echo of a cry. Looking at these two then it was to me =
as if
my mother had set out for the new country, and my sister held her back. But I see with a clearer vision now.
But she knew no more than we how it was to be;=
if
she seemed weary when we met her on the stair, she was still the brightest,=
the
most active figure in my mother’s room; she never complained, save when she=
had
to depart on that walk which separated them for half an hour. How reluctantly she put on her bonnet, =
how we
had to press her to it, and how often, having gone as far as the door, she =
came
back to stand by my mother’s side.
Sometimes as we watched from the window, I could not but laugh, and =
yet
with a pain at my heart, to see her hasting doggedly onward, not an eye for
right or left, nothing in her head but the return. There was always my fath=
er
in the house, than whom never was a more devoted husband, and often there w=
ere
others, one daughter in particular, but they scarce dared tend my mother—th=
is
one snatched the cup jealously from their hands. My mother liked it best from her. We all knew this. ‘I like them fine, bu=
t I
canna do without you.’ My sister, =
so
unselfish in all other things, had an unwearying passion for parading it be=
fore
us. It was the rich reward of her life.
The others spoke among themselves of what must
come soon, and they had tears to help them, but this daughter would not spe=
ak
of it, and her tears were ever slow to come.
I knew that night and day she was trying to get ready for a world wi=
thout
her mother in it, but she must remain dumb; none of us was so Scotch as she,
she must bear her agony alone, a tragic solitary Scotchwoman. Even my mother, who spoke so calmly to =
us of
the coming time, could not mention it to her.
These two, the one in bed, and the other bending over her, could only
look long at each other, until slowly the tears came to my sister’s eyes, a=
nd
then my mother would turn away her wet face.
And still neither said a word, each knew so well what was in the oth=
er’s
thoughts, so eloquently they spoke in silence, ‘Mother, I am loath to let y=
ou
go,’ and ‘Oh my daughter, now that my time is near, I wish you werena quite=
so
fond of me.’ But when the daughter=
had
slipped away my mother would grip my hand and cry, ‘I leave her to you; you=
see
how she has sown, it will depend on you how she is to reap.’ And I made
promises, but I suppose neither of us saw that she had already reaped.
In the night my mother might waken and sit up =
in
bed, confused by what she saw. Whi=
le she
slept, six decades or more had rolled back and she was again in her girlhoo=
d;
suddenly recalled from it she was dizzy, as with the rush of the years. How had she come into this room? When she went to bed last night, after
preparing her father’s supper, there had been a dresser at the window: what=
had
become of the salt-bucket, the meal-tub, the hams that should be hanging fr=
om
the rafters? There were no rafters=
; it
was a papered ceiling. She had oft=
en
heard of open beds, but how came she to be lying in one? To fathom these things she would try to =
spring
out of bed and be startled to find it a labour, as if she had been taken il=
l in
the night. Hearing her move I might
knock on the wall that separated us, this being a sign, prearranged between=
us,
that I was near by, and so all was well, but sometimes the knocking seemed =
to belong
to the past, and she would cry, ‘That is my father chapping at the door, I =
maun
rise and let him in.’ She seemed t=
o see
him—and it was one much younger than herself that she saw—covered with snow,
kicking clods of it from his boots, his hands swollen and chapped with sand=
and
wet. Then I would hear—it was a common experience of the night—my sister so=
othing
her lovingly, and turning up the light to show her where she was, helping h=
er to
the window to let her see that it was no night of snow, even humouring her =
by
going downstairs, and opening the outer door, and calling into the darkness,
‘Is anybody there?’ and if that was not sufficient, she would swaddle my mo=
ther
in wraps and take her through the rooms of the house, lighting them one by =
one,
pointing out familiar objects, and so guiding her slowly through the sixty =
odd
years she had jumped too quickly. =
And
perhaps the end of it was that my mother came to my bedside and said wistfu=
lly,
‘Am I an auld woman?’
But with daylight, even during the last week in
which I saw her, she would be up and doing, for though pitifully frail she =
no
longer suffered from any ailment. =
She
seemed so well comparatively that I, having still the remnants of an illnes=
s to
shake off, was to take a holiday in Switzerland, and then return for her, w=
hen
we were all to go to the much-loved manse of her much-loved brother in the =
west
country. So she had many preparati=
ons on
her mind, and the morning was the time when she had any strength to carry t=
hem
out. To leave her house had always=
been
a month’s work for her, it must be left in such perfect order, every corner=
visited
and cleaned out, every chest probed to the bottom, the linen lifted out,
examined and put back lovingly as if to make it lie more easily in her abse=
nce,
shelves had to be re-papered, a strenuous week devoted to the garret. Less exhaustively, but with much of the=
old exultation
in her house, this was done for the last time, and then there was the bring=
ing
out of her own clothes, and the spreading of them upon the bed and the plea=
sed
fingering of them, and the consultations about which should be left
behind. Ah, beautiful dream! I clu=
ng to
it every morning; I would not look when my sister shook her head at it, but
long before each day was done I too knew that it could never be. It had come true many times, but never
again. We two knew it, but when my
mother, who must always be prepared so long beforehand, called for her trunk
and band-boxes we brought them to her, and we stood silent, watching, while=
she
packed.
The morning came when I was to go away. It had come a hundred times, when I was=
a
boy, when I was an undergraduate, when I was a man, when she had seemed big=
and
strong to me, when she was grown so little and it was I who put my arms rou=
nd
her. But always it was the same
scene. I am not to write about it,=
of
the parting and the turning back on the stair, and two people trying to smi=
le,
and the setting off again, and the cry that brought me back. Nor shall I say more of the silent figu=
re in
the background, always in the background, always near my mother. The last I saw of these two was from the
gate. They were at the window which
never passes from my eyes. I could=
not
see my dear sister’s face, for she was bending over my mother, pointing me =
out
to her, and telling her to wave her hand and smile, because I liked it so.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> That action was an epitome of my sister=
’s
life.
I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram =
was
put into my hands. I had got a let=
ter
from my sister, a few hours before, saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words that sh=
e had
died suddenly the previous night. =
There
was no mention of my mother, and I was three days’ journey from home.
The news I got on reaching London was this: my
mother did not understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting=
for
me to tell her.
I need not have been such a coward. This is how these two died—for, after a=
ll, I
was too late by twelve hours to see my mother alive.
Their last night was almost gleeful. In the old days that hour before my mot=
her’s
gas was lowered had so often been the happiest that my pen steals back to it
again and again as I write: it was the time when my mother lay smiling in b=
ed and
we were gathered round her like children at play, our reticence scattered on
the floor or tossed in sport from hand to hand, the author become so boiste=
rous
that in the pauses they were holding him in check by force. Rather woful had been some attempts lat=
terly
to renew those evenings, when my mother might be brought to the verge of th=
em,
as if some familiar echo called her, but where she was she did not clearly
know, because the past was roaring in her ears like a great sea. But this night was a last gift to my
sister. The joyousness of their vo=
ices
drew the others in the house upstairs, where for more than an hour my mother
was the centre of a merry party and so clear of mental eye that they, who w=
ere
at first cautious, abandoned themselves to the sport, and whatever they sai=
d,
by way of humorous rally, she instantly capped as of old, turning their dar=
ts
against themselves until in self-defence they were three to one, and the th=
ree
hard pressed. How my sister must h=
ave
been rejoicing. Once again she cou=
ld
cry, ‘Was there ever such a woman!’ They
tell me that such a happiness was on the daughter’s face that my mother
commented on it, that having risen to go they sat down again, fascinated by=
the
radiance of these two. And when ev=
entually
they went, the last words they heard were, ‘They are gone, you see, mother,=
but
I am here, I will never leave you,’ and ‘Na, you winna leave me; fine I know
that.’ For some time afterwards th=
eir
voices could be heard from downstairs, but what they talked of is not known=
. And then came silence. Had I been at home I should have been i=
n the
room again several times, turning the handle of the door softly, releasing =
it
so that it did not creak, and standing looking at them. It had been so a thousand times. But that night, would I have slipped out
again, mind at rest, or should I have seen the change coming while they sle=
pt?
Let it be told in the fewest words. My sister awoke next morning with a hea=
dache. She had always been a martyr to headach=
es,
but this one, like many another, seemed to be unusually severe. Nevertheless she rose and lit my mother=
’s
fire and brought up her breakfast, and then had to return to bed. She was not able to write her daily let=
ter to
me, saying how my mother was, and almost the last thing she did was to ask =
my
father to write it, and not to let on that she was ill, as it would distress
me. The doctor was called, but she rapidly became unconscious. In this state she was removed from my
mother’s bed to another. It was
discovered that she was suffering from an internal disease. No one had guessed it. She herself never knew. Nothing could be done. In this unconsciousness she passed away,
without knowing that she was leaving her mother. Had I known, when I heard of her death,=
that
she had been saved that pain, surely I could have gone home more bravely wi=
th
the words,
Ar=
t thou
afraid His power fail When come=
s thy
evil day?
Ah, you would think so, I should have thought =
so,
but I know myself now. When I reached London I did hear how my sister died,=
but
still I was afraid. I saw myself i=
n my
mother’s room telling her why the door of the next room was locked, and I w=
as
afraid. God had done so much, and =
yet I could
not look confidently to Him for the little that was left to do. ‘O ye of little faith!’ These are the words I seem to hear my m=
other
saying to me now, and she looks at me so sorrowfully.
He did it very easily, and it has ceased to se=
em
marvellous to me because it was so plainly His doing. My timid mother saw the one who was nev=
er to
leave her carried unconscious from the room, and she did not break down.
They told her that I was on my way home, and s=
he
said with a confident smile, ‘He will come as quick as trains can bring
him.’ That is my reward, that is w=
hat I
have got for my books. Everything I
could do for her in this life I have done since I was a boy; I look back
through the years and I cannot see the smallest thing left undone.
They were buried together on my mother’s
seventy-sixth birthday, though there had been three days between their
deaths. On the last day, my mother
insisted on rising from bed and going through the house. The arms that had so often helped her o=
n that
journey were now cold in death, but there were others only less loving, and=
she
went slowly from room to room like one bidding good-bye, and in mine she sa=
id,
‘The beautiful rows upon rows of books, ant he said every one of them was m=
ine,
all mine!’ and in the east room, which was her greatest triumph, she said
caressingly, ‘My nain bonny room!’ All
this time there seemed to be something that she wanted, but the one was dead
who always knew what she wanted, and they produced many things at which she
shook her head. They did not know =
then that
she was dying, but they followed her through the house in some apprehension,
and after she returned to bed they saw that she was becoming very weak. Once she said eagerly, ‘Is that you, Da=
vid?’
and again she thought she heard her father knocking the snow off his boots.=
Her
desire for that which she could not name came back to her, and at last they=
saw
that what she wanted was the old christening robe. It was brought to her, and she unfolded=
it
with trembling, exultant hands, and when she had made sure that it was stil=
l of
virgin fairness her old arms went round it adoringly, and upon her face the=
re
was the ineffable mysterious glow of motherhood. Suddenly she said, ‘Wha’s bairn’s dead?=
is a
bairn of mine dead?’ but those watching dared not speak, and then slowly as=
if
with an effort of memory she repeated our names aloud in the order in which=
we
were born. Only one, who should ha=
ve
come third among the ten, did she omit, the one in the next room, but at the
end, after a pause, she said her name and repeated it again and again and
again, lingering over it as if it were the most exquisite music and this he=
r dying
song. And yet it was a very common=
place
name.
They knew now that she was dying. She told them to fold up the christenin=
g robe
and almost sharply she watched them put it away, and then for some time she
talked of the long lovely life that had been hers, and of Him to whom she o=
wed
it. She said good-bye to them all,=
and
at last turned her face to the side where her best-beloved had lain, and fo=
r over
an hour she prayed. They only caug=
ht the
words now and again, and the last they heard were ‘God’ and ‘love.’ I think God was smiling when He took he=
r to
Him, as He had so often smiled at her during those seventy-six years.
I saw her lying dead, and her face was beautif=
ul
and serene. But it was the other r=
oom I
entered first, and it was by my sister’s side that I fell upon my knees.
And now I am left without them, but I trust my
memory will ever go back to those happy days, not to rush through them, but
dallying here and there, even as my mother wanders through my books. And if I also live to a time when age m=
ust
dim my mind and the past comes sweeping back like the shades of night over =
the
bare road of the present it will not, I believe, be my youth I shall see but
hers, not a boy clinging to his mother’s skirt and crying, ‘Wait till I’m a
man, and you’ll lie on feathers,’ but a little girl in a magenta frock and a
white pinafore, who comes toward me through the long parks, singing to hers=
elf,
and carrying her father’s dinner in a flagon.
* * * * *
THE END =