diff --git "a/Science Fiction/The_War_in_the_Air.txt" "b/Science Fiction/The_War_in_the_Air.txt" deleted file mode 100644--- "a/Science Fiction/The_War_in_the_Air.txt" +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3456 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Margaret Ogilvy, by J. M. Barrie - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - - - - -Title: Margaret Ogilvy - by her son - - -Author: J. M. Barrie - - - -Release Date: October 21, 2010 [eBook #342] -First Posted: October 23, 1995 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGARET OGILVY*** - - -Transcribed from the 1897 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email -ccx074@pglaf.org - - [Picture: Picture of Margaret Ogilvy] - - - - - - MARGARET OGILVY - - - BY HER SON - - J. M. BARRIE - - [Picture: Graphic] - - _Second Edition_ - _Completing Twentieth Thousand_ - - * * * * * - - LONDON - HODDER AND STOUGHTON - 27 paternoster row - 1897 - - TO - THE MEMORY OF - MY SISTER - JANE ANN - - - - -CHAPTER I—HOW MY MOTHER GOT HER SOFT FACE - - -On the day I was born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, and in our -little house it was 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 the 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 something I remember, -as if I had jumped out of bed on that first day, and run ben to see how -they looked. I am sure my mother’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 door 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 which 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 affected 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 give 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 ‘They 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 put 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 whom I see in them is the -woman who came suddenly into view when they were at an end. Her timid -lips I have said, but 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 flung over her—we had not begun to hunt her -with a shawl, nor to make our bodies a screen 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 lie on -the mute blue eyes in which I have read all I know and would ever care to -write. For when you looked into my mother’s eyes 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 was six years old have -guided me through life, and I pray God they may remain my only earthly -judge to the last. They were 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 life, 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 between Death and -her boy. We trooped with her down the brae to the wooden station, and I -think I was envying her the journey in the mysterious wagons; I know we -played around her, proud of our right to 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. But I speak -from hearsay no longer; I knew my mother for ever now. - -That is how she got her soft face and her pathetic 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 name, and after the Scotch custom she was still Margaret -Ogilvy to her old friends. Margaret Ogilvy I loved to name her. Often -when I was a boy, ‘Margaret Ogilvy, are you there?’ I would call up the -stair. - -She was always delicate from that hour, and for many months she was very -ill. I have 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, between -whom stood twenty years. Hundreds of other children were christened in -it also, such robes being then a rare possession, 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, -petted it, smiled to it before putting it into the arms of those to whom -it was being 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 through 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 might 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 house were of her making, and you -don’t know her in the least if you think they were 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 added 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 the 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 window -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. Or go to church next Sunday, and -watch a certain family filing in, the boy lifting his legs high to show -off his new boots, but all the others demure, especially the timid, -unobservant-looking little woman in the rear of them. If you were the -minister’s wife that day or the banker’s daughters you would have got a -shock. But she bought the christening robe, and when I used to ask why, -she would beam and look conscious, and say she wanted to be extravagant -once. And she told me, still smiling, that the more a woman was given to -stitching and making things for herself, the greater was her passionate -desire now and again to rush to the shops and ‘be foolish.’ The -christening robe with its pathetic frills is over half a century old now, -and has begun to droop a little, like a daisy whose time is past; but it -is as fondly kept together as ever: I saw it in use again only the other -day. - -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 stair and sat on it and -sobbed. I know not 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 of -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 was afraid, and I -stood still. I suppose 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 just me.’ Then I heard a cry, and -my mother turned in bed, and though it was dark I knew that she was -holding out her arms. - -After that I sat a great deal in her bed trying 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 against 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 suddenly 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 face 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 shook 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 was 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 down, 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 could 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 secret, 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 pockets 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 comrades, I secretly put on a suit of his clothes, dark grey -they were, with little spots, and they fitted me many years afterwards, -and thus disguised I slipped, unknown 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, such 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 frailer, 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 rippled with -mirth as before, and her laugh that I had tried so hard to force came -running home again. I have heard no such laugh 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 always 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 time 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 why 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 came to that chapter she would put her hands -to her heart or even over her ears. - - - - -CHAPTER II—WHAT SHE HAD BEEN - - -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, older 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 home now -in the dark. Where had been formerly 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 that 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 born at twenty-one; as quickly as two people may -exchange seats, the daughter, till 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 tremulously 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 provision, -and they have the means as they never had before. Not in batches are -boys now sent to college; the half-dozen a year have dwindled to one, -doubtless because in these days they can begin to draw wages as they step -out of their fourteenth year. Here assuredly there is loss, but all the -losses would be but a pebble in a sea of gain were it not for this, that -with so many of the family, young 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 abounds 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 is no truth. In our little town, which -is a sample of many, life is as interesting, as pathetic, as joyous as -ever it was; 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 windows needs to turn to books? The reason my books -deal with the past instead of with the life I myself have known is simply -this, that I soon grow tired of writing tales unless I can see a little -girl, of whom my mother has told me, wandering confidently through the -pages. Such a grip has her memory of her girlhood had upon me since I -was a boy of six. - -Those innumerable talks with her made her youth 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 once a child -also, and the contrast between what she is and what she was is perhaps -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 mason’s figure rise before me from -the old chair on which I was nursed and now write my books. On the -surface he is as hard 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 quarry, nor shall his chapped hands, as -long as they can grasp the mell. It is a night of rain or snow, and my -mother, the little girl in a pinafore who is already his housekeeper, has -been many times to the door to look for him. At last he draws nigh, -hoasting. Or I see him setting off to church, for he was a great ‘stoop’ -of the Auld Licht kirk, and his mouth is very firm now as if there were a -case of discipline to face, but 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 this chair repeating to her his favourite poem, ‘The -Cameronian’s Dream,’ and at the first lines so solemnly uttered, - - ‘In 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 jumps 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 each 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 the -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 (but if you -think that this was poverty you don’t know the meaning of the word), and -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 with 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 because there was so much to do, doing it as -thoroughly and sedately as if the brides were already due for a lesson, -and then rushing out in a fit of childishness 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 work 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 she 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 did carry -that finger in such a way that the most reluctant must see. She was very -particular about her gloves, 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 that -her last year’s bonnet would do for this year without alteration, or that -it would defy the face of clay to count the number of her shawls. In one -of my books there is a mother who is setting off with her son for the -town to which he had been called as minister, and she pauses on the -threshold to ask him anxiously if he thinks her bonnet ‘sets’ her. A -reviewer said she acted thus, not because she cared how she looked, but -for the sake of her son. This, I remember, amused my mother very much. - -I have seen many weary on-dings of snow, but the one I seem to recollect -best occurred nearly twenty years before I was born. It was at the time -of my mother’s marriage to one who proved a most loving as he was always -a well-loved husband, 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 and 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 Sunday 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 she 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. Three 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. I see her bending over the -cradle of her first-born, college for him already in her eye (and my -father not less ambitious), and anon it is a girl who is in the cradle, -and then another girl—already a tragic figure to those who know the end. -I wonder if any instinct told my mother that the great day of her life -was when she bore this child; what I am sure of is that from the first -the child followed her with the most wistful eyes and saw how she needed -help and longed to rise and give it. For of physical strength my mother -had never very much; it was her spirit that got through the work, and in -those days she was often so ill that the sand rained on the doctor’s -window, and men ran to and fro with leeches, and ‘she is in life, we can -say no more’ was the information for those who came knocking at the door. -‘I am sorrow to say,’ her father writes in an old letter now before me, -‘that Margaret is in a state that she was never so bad before in this -world. Till Wednesday night she was in as poor a condition as you could -think of to be alive. However, after bleeding, leeching, etc., the Dr. -says this morning that he is better hoped now, but at present we can say -no more but only she is alive and in the hands of Him in whose hands all -our lives are. I can give you no adequate view of what my feelings are, -indeed they are a burden too heavy for me and I cannot describe them. I -look on my right and left hand and find no comfort, and if it were not -for the rock that is higher than I my spirit would utterly fall, but -blessed be His name who can comfort those that are cast down. O for more -faith in His supporting grace in this hour of trial.’ - -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 weeks old, and the next at two years. She 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 that 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 hours - 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 have been mistaken, for I must - confess 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 taking, and the lively images of - these things intrude themselves more into my mind than they should - do, but there is allowance for moderate 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 the quick with her. She had no - handling of the last one as she was not 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, but 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 and 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 - younger 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 as 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 are there that when earthly comforts is taken away, may - well say What have I more? all their delight is placed in some one - thing or another in the world, and who can blame them for unwillingly - parting with what they esteem their chief good? O that we were wise - to lay up treasure for the time of need, for it is truly a solemn - affair to enter the lists with the king of terrors. It is strange - that the living 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 - waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and - night for my own and others’ stupidity in this great matter. O for - grace to do every day work in its proper time and to live above the - tempting cheating train of earthly things. The rest of the family - are moderately well. I have been for some days worse than I have - been for 8 months past, but I may soon get better. I am in the same - way I have often been in before, but there is no security for it - always being so, for I know that it cannot be far from the time when - I will be one of those that once were. I have no other news to send - you, and as little heart for them. I hope you will take the earliest - opportunity of writing that you can, and be particular as regards - Margaret, for she requires consolation.’ - -He died exactly a week after writing this letter, but my mother was to -live for another forty-four years. And joys of a kind never shared in by -him were to come to her so abundantly, so long drawn out that, strange as -it would have seemed to him to know it, her fuller life had scarce yet -begun. And with the joys were to come their sweet, frightened comrades -pain and grief; again she was to be touched to the quick, 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 change, 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 matters 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 bends 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. - - - - -CHAPTER III—WHAT I SHOULD BE - - -My mother was a great reader, and with ten minutes to spare before the -starch was ready would begin the ‘Decline and Fall’—and finish it, too, -that winter. Foreign words in the text annoyed her and 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 words 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 lonely 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, ‘Ay, -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 would it no’ be more to the point to say, “O matra pulchra -filia pulchrior”?’ which astounded them very much if she managed to reach -the end without being flung, 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 was in two minds about him; he was one of the -most engrossing of mortals to her, she admired him prodigiously, pictured -him at the head of his caravan, now attacked 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 she thought he should -be put down by law. Explorers’ mothers also interested her very much; -the books might tell 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 the 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 three days), but on -discovering that they were nights when we had paid for knights 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 was I that I turned our garden -into sloughs of Despond, with pea-sticks to represent Christian on his -travels and a buffet-stool for his burden, but when I dragged 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, standing at the counter, -most of the other books in the shop, which is perhaps the most exquisite -way of reading. And I took in a magazine called ‘Sunshine,’ the most -delicious periodical, I am sure, of any day. It cost a halfpenny or a -penny a month, and always, as I fondly remember, had a continued tale -about the dearest girl, who sold water-cress, which is a dainty not grown -and I suppose never seen in my native town. This romantic little -creature took such hold of my imagination that I cannot eat water-cress -even now without emotion. I lay in bed wondering what she would be up to -in the next number; I have lost trout because when they nibbled my mind -was wandering with her; my early life was embittered 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 glorious idea, or it was put into my head by my mother, then -desirous of making progress with her new clouty hearthrug. The notion -was nothing short of this, why should I not write the tales myself? 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 bounded 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 added to the -rug. Authorship seemed, like her bannock-baking, to consist of running -between two points. They were all tales of adventure (happiest is he who -writes of adventure), no characters were allowed within if I knew their -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 calling 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 and 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): where he stabbed us both was in -writing that he considered me a ‘clever lady.’ I replied stiffly that I -was a gentleman, and since then I have kept that manuscript concealed. I -looked through it lately, and, oh, but it is dull! I defy any one to -read it. - -The malignancy of publishers, however, could not turn me back. From the -day on which 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 who wished me well. I -remember being asked by two maiden ladies, about the time I left the -university, what I was to be, 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 -mine jestingly as something I would grow out of, and afterwards they hurt -her so that I tried to give them up. To be a minister—that she thought -was among the fairest prospects, but she was a very 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 think of -such things.’ - -I had one person only on my side, an old tailor, 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 the shortest, from the tea-pot on the hob to the board -on which he stitched, from 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, the -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 did 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 the -other, wondering what this is on his head, it is a hat; a faint smell of -singed cloth goes by with him. This man had heard 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 gaze on me and said solemnly, - - What can I do to be for ever known, - And make the age to come my own? - -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 own 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 came, and then Death, and found him grasping a -box-iron. - -I hurried home with the mouthful, but neighbours had dropped in, and this -was for her ears only, so I drew her to the stair, and said imperiously, - - What 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 from 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 jest 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 managed 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, doing honestly -the work that suits me best. Who should know so well as I that it is but -a handloom compared to the 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 should have my way—but, ah, -the iron seats in that park of horrible repute, and that 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, which 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 seats 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 Hyde 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 upon it I knew it by maps, and drew them more -accurately than I could draw them now. Many a time she and I took our -jaunt together through the map, and were most gleeful, popping into -telegraph offices 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 not 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 reply, ‘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 tens, 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 worth 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 are hers, and you -must seek her out and make much of her, and, until you can rely on her -good-nature (note this), not a word about the other lady. When at last -she took me in I grew so fond of her that I called her by the other’s -name, and even now I think at times that 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, nearly 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 could 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 lightly. - -‘A gey auld-farrant-like heroine!’ she said, and 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 come 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 written? 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 studied how to become a journalist. - - - - -CHAPTER IV—AN EDITOR - - -A devout lady, to whom some friend had presented one of my books, used to -say when asked how she was getting on with it, ‘Sal, it’s dreary, weary, -uphill work, but I’ve wrastled through with tougher jobs in my time, and, -please God, I’ll wrastle through with this one.’ It was in this spirit, -I fear, though she 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 reading them. In my spare hours I was trying journalism -of another kind and sending it to London, but nearly eighteen months -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 put 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 droll to her in the sight of the words Auld Licht in print. -For her, as for me, that newspaper was soon to have the face of a friend. -To this day I never pass its 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 fearing the talk of the town, hid -the paper from all eyes. For some time afterwards, while I proudly -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 articles; 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 -London 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 more 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 came to me in letters which she dictated -to my sisters. How well I could hear her sayings between 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.’ And I was sounded as to the advisability of sending him a -present of a lippie of shortbread, which was to be her crafty way of -getting round him. By this time, though my mother and I were hundreds of -miles apart, you may picture us waving our hands to each other across -country, and shouting ‘Hurrah!’ You may also picture the editor in his -office thinking he was behaving like a shrewd man of business, and -unconscious that up in the north there was an elderly lady chuckling so -much at him that she could scarcely scrape the potatoes. - -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 you 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 that 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 -family, and then I would say they were the finest family in London.’ - -‘Yes, that is just what you would do, you cunning woman! But if he has -no family?’ - -‘I would say what great men editors are!’ - -‘He would see through you.’ - -‘Not he!’ - -‘You don’t understand that what imposes on common 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 with 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 walk 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 would 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 fear 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 many 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 until 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 assumed -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 Sweet 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 amusement 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 were hung on a string by the fire, which was a -recollection of my own, but she could 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 editor, and in her gay moods she would say, ‘I was fifteen when I -got my first pair of elastic-sided boots. Tell him my charge 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, but they would have it in no guise; there seemed to be a -blight on everything that was Scotch. I daresay we sighed, but never -were collaborators more prepared for rejection, and though my mother -might look wistfully at the scorned manuscript at times and murmur, ‘You -poor cold little 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 generous, -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 other 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 days, and the London -clubs were her scorn. Often I heard her on them—she raised her voice to -make me hear, whichever room I might be in, and it was when she was -sarcastic that I skulked the most: ‘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 doited auld stock that never set foot in a club, so it’s -little I ken about glory. But I may tell you if you bide in London and -canna become member of a club, the best you can do is to tie a rope 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 it 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 your 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 expect 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 member of a club), but I think I -can tell you to make your mind easy on that head. You’ll get in, I’se -uphaud—and your thirty pounds will get in, too.’ - -‘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, for 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 them.’ - -‘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, why do they -have to pay thirty pounds?’ - -‘To keep it going.’ - -‘They dinna have to pay for their dinners, then?’ - -‘Oh yes, they have to pay extra for dinner.’ - -‘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 scorned 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 club?’ - -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 accidents?’ - -Not a penny. - -‘Anything at New Year’s time?’ - -Not so much as a goose. - -‘Is there any one mortal thing you get free out 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 recovered 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 mother 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 even at her poorest she was -the most cheerful giver. In the old days, when the article arrived, she -did not read it at once, she first counted the lines to discover what we -should get for it—she and the 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 life into a fairy tale. So often in those days she -went down suddenly upon her knees; we would come upon her thus, and 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. - - - - -CHAPTER V—A DAY OF HER LIFE - - -I should 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 much work. It should not be difficult, for she -repeated herself from day to day and yet did it with a quaint -unreasonableness that was ever yielding fresh delight. Our love for her -was such that we could easily tell what she would do 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 you have time to count them. She has strict -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 -had been brought here from the lordly east room, where it was of no use -whatever. But in her opinion it was too beautiful for use; it belonged -to the east room, where she could take pleasant peeps at it; she had -objected to its removal, even become low-spirited. Now is her -opportunity. The screen is an unwieldy thing, but still as a mouse she -carries it, and they are well under weigh when it strikes against the -gas-bracket in the passage. Next 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. Yes, maybe -she did promise not to venture forth on the cold floors of daybreak, but -she had risen for a moment only, and we just t’neaded her with our talk -about draughts—there were no such things as draughts in her young -days—and it is more than she can do (here she again attempts to rise but -we hold her down) to lie there and watch that beautiful screen being -spoilt. I reply that the beauty of the screen has ever been its -miserable defect: ho, there! for a knife with which to spoil its beauty -and make the bedroom its fitting home. As there is no knife handy, my -foot will do; I raise my foot, and then—she sees that it is bare, she -cries to me excitedly to go back to bed lest I catch cold. For though, -ever careless of herself, she will wander the house unshod, and tell us -not to talk havers when we chide her, the sight of one of us similarly -negligent rouses her anxiety at once. She is willing now to sign any vow -if only I will take my bare feet back to bed, but probably she is soon -after me in hers to make sure that I am nicely covered up. - -It is scarcely six o’clock, and we have all promised to sleep for another -hour, but in ten minutes she is sure that eight 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 what 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 pæan 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 dear 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 the 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 hidden 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 her best and would admit -it, beaming, when I put a mirror into her hands and told her to look; but -nevertheless the cap cost no less than so-and-so, whereas—Was that a -knock at the door? She is gone, 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 refixed, and its covers -sewn and resewn by her, so that you would say it can never fall 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 manner, but this one differently, her lips moving with each word -as if she were reading aloud, and her face very solemn. The Testament -lies open on her lap long after she has ceased to read, and the -expression of her face has not changed. - -I have seen her reading other books early in the 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 dined, 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. These 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 when 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 droll proceeding to her. In her young days, 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 much -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 you off for your -walk?’ and add fervently, ‘Rather you than me!’ I was one of those who -walked, and though 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 was the one English -custom she had learned. - -In an hour or so I return, and perhaps find her 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!’ - -‘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 you heard me open the door.’ - -‘Havers.’ - -‘Did you?’ - -‘No.’ - -‘Well, then, when you heard me at the gate?’ - -‘It might have been when I heard you at the gate.’ - -As daylight goes she follows it with her sewing 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 mine) among women novelists, or if it be a -Carlyle, and we move softly, she will read, entranced, for hours. Her -delight 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 wanted 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 letters 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 these 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 feeling 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 very 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. ‘You see he hadna forgot,’ she would say proudly, as if this was a -compliment in which all her sex could share, and on her old tender face -shone some of the elation with which Mrs. Carlyle wrote that letter. - -But there were times, she held, when Carlyle must 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 neither here nor there.’ But -her verdict as 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 overrides 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. Gladstone 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 tolerated, and Gladstone was the name of the something which makes all -our sex such queer characters. She had a profound faith 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 -children. And then, with a motherly smile, she would leave them to gorge -on him. But in the idolising of Gladstone she recognised, nevertheless, -a certain inevitability, and would no more have tried to contend with it -than to sweep a shadow off the floor. Gladstone was, and there was 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 Gladstonian 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 that 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 enjoyment in seeing a false -Gladstonian tortured. - -It was all such plain-sailing for him, she pointed out; he did not like -this Home Rule, and therefore he must vote against it. - -She put it pitiful clear, he replied with a groan. - -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, well, I’ll be going to -vote—little did I think the day would come,’ and so on, but 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 -Gladstone’s man!’ He jumped up and made off without a word, but from the -east window we watched him strutting down the brae. I laughed, but she -said, ‘I’m no sure that it’s a laughing matter,’ and afterwards, ‘I would -have liked fine to be that Gladstone’s mother.’ - -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 down 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, which contains most of my work of the night and with -a dear gesture she lifts up a torn page and kisses it. ‘Poor thing,’ she -says to it, ‘and you would have liked so fine to be printed!’ and she -puts 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,’ she says slowly. - -‘And proved it, too!’ cries a voice from the door, the voice of one who -was prouder of her even than I; it is true, and yet almost 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. - -So my mother and I go up the stair together. ‘We have changed places,’ -she says; ‘that was just how I used to help you up, but I’m the bairn -now.’ - -She brings out the Testament again; it was always lying within reach; it -is the lock of hair she left me when she died. And when she has read for -a long time she ‘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 with no -earthly listener. Often and often 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. - - - - -CHAPTER VI—HER MAID OF ALL WORK - - -And sometimes I was her maid of all work. - -It is early morn, and my mother has come noiselessly into my room. I -know it is she, though my eyes are shut, and I am only half awake. -Perhaps I was dreaming 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 headaches -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, and 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 was an author.’ - -‘More like the fiftieth!’ she says almost gleefully, so I have begun -well, for to keep up her spirits is the great thing 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 -coal 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 knew 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 very 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 him 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 forks (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 final 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 unction, -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 same 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 is, 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 properly 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. One 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 hour’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 light 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 writing -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 she 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 chairs 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 pleasant 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 one bannock is the marrows of another, while chapters—and -then, perhaps, her eyes twinkle, and says she saucily, ‘But, sal, you may -be right, for sometimes your bannocks are as alike as mine!’ - -Or I may be roused from my writing by her cry that I am making strange -faces again. It 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 writing 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 who is stout and lean -on the same evening, but what is he to the novelist who is a dozen -persons within the hour? Morally, I fear, we must deteriorate—but this -is a subject I may wisely edge away from. - -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 she 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 leading 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-world 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 tell it without exposing -herself. Has she 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 door barred,’ I say -cleverly. - -This crushes her for a moment; but her eagerness 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 never 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 can 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 woman 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 expected 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 has 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. - -‘I daresay,’ says my sister; ‘but after you paid 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 cart.’ - -‘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 between 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 presently my sister is able to -rise, and after a sharp fight I am expelled from the kitchen. The last -thing I do as maid of all work is to lug upstairs the clothes-basket -which has just arrived with the mangling. Now there is delicious linen -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-night I must make my hero say ‘Darling,’ and it -needs both privacy and concentration. In a word, let me admit (though I -should 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 real 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 make Albert say -‘darling,’ and even gather her up in his arms, but I begin to doubt it; -the moment sees me as shy as ever; I still find it advisable to lock the -door, and then—no witness save the dog—I ‘do’ it dourly with my teeth -clenched, while 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 proposal 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 their 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 want 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. I lock the door, and at -last I am bringing 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 have 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-machine. - -I am wondering whether I should confess or brazen 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-napkins.’ - -‘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.’ - - - - -CHAPTER VII—R. L. S. - - -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 ‘That 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 her 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 write, ‘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 head lay heavy on the table, and to her anxious eyes, I doubt -not, I was the picture of woe. ‘Not writing!’ I echoed, no, 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 thought the blow -had fallen; I had awakened to the discovery, always dreaded by her, that -I had written myself dry; I was no better than an empty ink-bottle. She -wrung her hands, but indignation came 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 my -mother immediately, and indeed vindictively. - -‘You have not read any of them,’ I reminded her. - -‘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 her 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 when she rose. She would -frown, and carrying it downstairs, as if she had it in the tongs, replace -it on its book-shelf. I would wrap it up in the cover she had made for -the latest Carlyle: she would skin it contemptuously and again bring it -down. I would hide her spectacles in it, and lay it on top of the -clothes-basket and prop it up invitingly open against her tea-pot. And -at last I got her, though I forget by which of many contrivances. What I -recall vividly is a key-hole view, to which another member of the family -invited me. Then I saw my mother wrapped up in ‘The Master of -Ballantrae’ and muttering the music to herself, nodding her head in -approval, and taking a stealthy glance at the foot of each page before -she began at the top. Nevertheless she had an ear for the door, for when -I bounced in she had been too clever for me; there was no book to be -seen, only an apron on her lap and she was gazing out at the window. -Some such conversation as this followed:— - -‘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 smile 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 put 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 small, but I gave her a last -chance, for I said that some people found it a book there 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 now she who carried the -book covertly upstairs, and I who replaced it on the shelf, and several -times we caught each other in the act, but not a word said either of us; -we were grown self-conscious. Much of the play no doubt I forget, but -one incident I remember clearly. She had come down to sit beside me -while I wrote, and sometimes, when I looked up, her eye was not on me, -but on the shelf 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 very lonely -up there in a stately row. I think their eye is on you the moment you -enter the room, and so you are drawn to look at them, and you take a -volume down with the impulse that induces one to unchain the dog. And -the result is not dissimilar, for in another moment you two are at play. -Is there any other 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 uneasy 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 cane with his cambric -handkerchief), and his sword clattered deliciously (I cannot 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 could do as they were now -much nearer each other) that I could catch only one remark. It came from -James, and seems 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 minutes she was back, carrying her accomplice openly, -and she thrust him with positive viciousness into the place where my -Stevenson had lost a tooth (as the writer whom he most resembled would -have said). And then like a good mother she took up one of her son’s -books and read it most determinedly. It had become 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 its -inferiority. - -‘The Master of Ballantrae’ is not the best. Conceive the glory, which -was my mother’s, of knowing from a trustworthy source that there are at -least three better awaiting you on the same shelf. She did not know Alan -Breck yet, and he was as anxious to step down as Mr. Bally himself. John -Silver was there, getting into his leg, so that she should not have to -wait a moment, and roaring, ‘I’ll lay to that!’ when she told me -consolingly that she could not thole pirate stories. Not to know these -gentlemen, what is it like? It is like never having been in love. But -they are in the house! That is like knowing that you will fall in love -to-morrow morning. With one word, 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 -you 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 plain to me, eyeing me a little -anxiously the while, and of course I accepted the explanation. Alan is -the biggest child 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 was of ‘Treasure Island,’ and how faithful she -tried to be to me all the time she was reading it! I had to put my hands -over her eyes to let her know that I had entered the room, and even then -she might 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. - -‘I wonder, mother, what it is about the man that so infatuates the -public?’ - -‘He takes no hold of me,’ she insists. ‘I would a hantle rather read -your books.’ - -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 anxiety, 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 read -‘Treasure Island,’ holding it close to the ribs of the fire (because she -could not spare 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 book, ‘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 the laddie in the barrel to -her—Was he not always a laddie in the barrel himself, 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 back 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 find 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 between 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 -blue-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 she 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 remembered who was upstairs and what she was probably doing, and -I ran to her, three steps 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 should 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 meantime 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 me on a -horse. It is still a wonderful clear 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 with 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 for him, -and stood watching, while his lithe figure rose and fell as he cast and -hinted back from the crystal waters of Noran-side. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII—A PANIC IN THE HOUSE - - -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 called 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, and -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 clutched the besom. I tossed aside my papers, -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 servant!’ 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 manner changed as they opened the door. I have even held my -own with gentlemen in plush, giving one my hat, another my stick, and a -third my coat, and all done with little more trouble than I should have -expended in putting the three articles on the chair myself. But this -bold deed, and other big things 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 manner, certain naughty boys who played with me. The banker did -not seem really great to me, but his servant—oh 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, and he returned with wild roses in his -buttonhole, his hand up to hide them, and on his face the troubled look -of those who know that if they take this lady they 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 fatal 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 out 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, diamond 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 plainly before me ere I set off. My relative 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 ourselves I shrank from the -thought. It would not be the same house; we should have to dissemble; I -saw myself speaking English the long day through. You only know 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 really 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 open 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 see a light through one of my -chinks: she was double-shuttered. Now, it seems to be a law of nature -that 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 ignorant of the life outside their circle, than any -other family in the world. And as knowledge is sympathy, the affection -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 affection 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 -treated 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 -revealed 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 and in our -prayers confessed that the fill of delight had been given us, whatever -might befall. We had not to wait till all was over to know its value; my -mother used to say, ‘We never understand how little we need in this world -until we know the loss of it,’ and there can be few truer sayings, but -during her last years we exulted daily in the possession of her 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, and 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 -when, 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 could work by snatches, and was glad, but what was the result to -me compared to the joy of hearing that voice from the other room? There -lay all the work I was ever proud of, the rest is but honest -craftsmanship done to give her coal and food and softer pillows. My -thousand letters that she so carefully preserved, always sleeping with -the last beneath the sheet, where one was found 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. 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 hand 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 bravely to my -sister and say, ‘I have been thinking it over, and I believe I would like -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 you 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. We’ll tell her to take her -time over them.’ - -‘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, too, 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 -should have done without her. - - - - -CHAPTER IX—MY HEROINE. - - -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,’ says 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 would 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 should bear in mind that I hinna -your cleverness’ (they were constantly giving each other little knocks). - -‘I won’t give you the satisfaction of saying her name. But this I will -say, it is high 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 little -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 may 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 herself -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 say, crushed. - -‘Maybe not,’ says my mother doubtfully. ‘What was her name?’ - -‘Her name,’ I answer with triumph, ‘was not Margaret’; 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 she was a tall, majestic woman?’ - -‘It’s the first time I ever heard it said of her,’ 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. -‘When 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 age, and of remarkable -beauty. - -‘That settles you,’ says my sister. - -‘I was no beauty at eighteen,’ my mother admits, 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 another) 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 are -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, ‘Footman, 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 she 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 the ways you say she had—your mother had them just the -same. Did you ever notice what an extraordinary woman your mother is?’ - -Then would I seek my mother for comfort. She was the more ready to give -it because of her profound conviction that if I was found out—that is, if -readers discovered how frequently and in how many guises she appeared in -my books—the affair would become a public scandal. - -‘You see Jess is not really you,’ I begin inquiringly. - -‘Oh no, she is another kind of woman altogether,’ 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 -mutters. - -This was not the sort of difference I could greatly plume myself upon, -and honesty would force me to say, ‘As far as that 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 -always 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 betwixt 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 -difference,’ she would say eagerly. ‘There’s my silk, for instance. -Though I say it mysel, there’s not a better silk in the valley 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 she 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 hangs. - -‘Ah, mother, I am afraid that was very like Jess!’ - -‘How could it be like her when she didna even have a wardrobe? I tell -you what, if there 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, Jess 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 done, mother.’ - -Then a sweeter expression would come into her face. ‘No,’ she would say -reflectively, ‘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 woman, 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 shawl.’ - -‘Maybe, but though I hadna boasted about my silk 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; not to my first, -because—well, as it was my first there would naturally be something 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 should 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, she’s no’ so very -like me. She was long in finding out about Babbie. I’se uphaud I should -have been quicker.’ - -‘Babbie, you see, kept close to the garden-wall.’ - -‘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 thinking, 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 was 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 entered 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 because you knew nobody you -could make your women-folk out of! Do you mind that, and how we both -laughed 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 since I carried his dinner in a flagon through the long parks of -Kinnordy.’ - -‘I often go into the long parks, mother, and sit 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 time to fall out. I -used to wear a magenta 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 she 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 say, “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 the 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, “Wait -till I’m a man.” You fair shamed me before 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 age; 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 would say, but she did not -like that. ‘They 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 and 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 heavy with years to -follow a story. To me this was as if my book must go out cold into the -world (like all that may come after 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 before 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 -her without much understanding. ‘Just to please him,’ my sister -whispered, and then in a low, trembling voice my mother 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 dead, ‘luck.’ And then the old smile came -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 always does—at the -Fourteenth of John. She made an effort to read but could not. Suddenly -she stooped and kissed the broad page. ‘Will that do instead?’ she -asked. - - - - -CHAPTER X—ART THOU AFRAID HIS POWER SHALL FAIL? - - -For years 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 vain 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 look -upon her best-beloved, not my arm but my sister’s should be round her -when she died, 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 pass 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— - - Art 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 year, 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. It is no longer the mother but the daughter -who is in front, and she cries, ‘Mother, you are lingering so long at the -end, I have ill waiting for you.’ - -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 father in the house, than whom never was a more -devoted husband, and often there were others, one daughter in particular, -but they scarce dared tend my mother—this one snatched the cup jealously -from their hands. My mother liked it best from her. We all knew this. -‘I like them fine, but I canna do without you.’ My sister, so unselfish -in all other things, had an unwearying passion for parading it before 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 speak 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 without 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, and then my mother would -turn away her wet face. And still neither said a word, each knew so well -what was in the other’s thoughts, so eloquently they spoke in silence, -‘Mother, I am loath to let you 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. While she slept, six decades or more had rolled back and she -was again in her girlhood; 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 from the rafters? There were -no rafters; it was a papered ceiling. She had often 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 ill 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 to 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 -soothing her lovingly, and turning up the light to show her where she -was, helping her 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 mother 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 wistfully, ‘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 illness to shake off, was to take a holiday in -Switzerland, and then return for her, when we were all to go to the -much-loved manse of her much-loved brother in the west country. So she -had many preparations on her mind, and the morning was the time when she -had any strength to carry them 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 absence, 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 bringing out of her own clothes, and the spreading of them upon -the bed and the pleased fingering of them, and the consultations about -which should be left behind. Ah, beautiful dream! I clung 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 round 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 smile, and the setting off again, and the cry that -brought me back. Nor shall I say more of the silent figure 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. 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 letter from my sister, a few hours before, saying that all was -well at home. The telegram said in five words that she 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 all, 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 -mother’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 bed 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 boisterous that in the pauses they were -holding him in check by force. Rather woful had been some attempts -latterly to renew those evenings, when my mother might be brought to the -verge of them, 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 voices 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 were at first cautious, abandoned themselves to -the sport, and whatever they said, by way of humorous rally, she -instantly capped as of old, turning their darts against themselves until -in self-defence they were three to one, and the three hard pressed. How -my sister must have been rejoicing. Once again she could 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 -eventually 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 their 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 in 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 slept? - -Let it be told in the fewest words. My sister awoke next morning with a -headache. She had always been a martyr to headaches, 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 letter 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 with the words, - - Art thou afraid His power fail - When comes 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 in my mother’s room telling her why the door of the -next room was locked, and I was 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 mother saying -to me now, and she looks at me so sorrowfully. - -He did it very easily, and it has ceased to seem marvellous to me because -it was so plainly His doing. My timid mother saw the one who was never -to leave her carried unconscious from the room, and she did not break -down. She who used to wring her hands if her daughter was gone for a -moment never asked for her again, they were afraid to mention her name; -an awe fell upon them. But I am sure they need not have been so anxious. -There are mysteries in life and death, but this was not one of them. A -child can understand what happened. God said that my sister must come -first, but He put His hand on my mother’s eyes at that moment and she was -altered. - -They told her that I was on my way home, and she said with a confident -smile, ‘He will come as quick as trains can bring him.’ That is my -reward, that is what 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 on 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 said, ‘The beautiful rows upon -rows of books, ant he said every one of them was mine, 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, David?’ 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 still of virgin fairness her old arms -went round it adoringly, and upon her face there 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 have 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 her -dying song. And yet it was a very commonplace name. - -They knew now that she was dying. She told them to fold up the -christening 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 owed it. She said good-bye to them all, and at -last turned her face to the side where her best-beloved had lain, and for -over an hour she prayed. They only caught the words now and again, and -the last they heard were ‘God’ and ‘love.’ I think God was smiling when -He took her to Him, as He had so often smiled at her during those -seventy-six years. - -I saw her lying dead, and her face was beautiful and serene. But it was -the other room I entered first, and it was by my sister’s side that I -fell upon my knees. The rounded completeness of a woman’s life that was -my mother’s had not been for her. She would not have it at the price. -‘I’ll never leave you, mother.’—‘Fine I know you’ll never leave me.’ The -fierce joy of loving too much, it is a terrible thing. My sister’s mouth -was firmly closed, as if she had got her way. - -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 must 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 herself, and carrying -her father’s dinner in a flagon. - - * * * * * - - THE END - - * * * * * - - * * * * * - - Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE - Printers to Her Majesty - - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGARET OGILVY*** - - -******* This file should be named 342-0.txt or 342-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/342 - - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you -do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the -rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose -such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and -research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do -practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is -subject to the trademark license, especially commercial -redistribution. - - - -*** START: FULL LICENSE *** - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project -Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at -http://www.gutenberg.org/license). - - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy -all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. -If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the -terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or -entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement -and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" -or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the -collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an -individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are -located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from -copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative -works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg -are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project -Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by -freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of -this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with -the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by -keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project -Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in -a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check -the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement -before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or -creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project -Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning -the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United -States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate -access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently -whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, -copied or distributed: - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived -from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is -posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied -and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees -or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work -with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the -work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 -through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the -Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or -1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional -terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked -to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the -permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any -word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or -distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than -"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version -posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), -you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a -copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon -request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other -form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided -that - -- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is - owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he - has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments - must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you - prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax - returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and - sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the - address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to - the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." - -- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or - destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium - and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of - Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any - money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days - of receipt of the work. - -- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set -forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from -both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael -Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the -Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm -collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain -"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or -corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual -property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a -computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by -your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with -your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with -the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a -refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity -providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to -receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy -is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further -opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER -WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO -WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. -If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the -law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be -interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by -the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any -provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance -with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, -promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, -harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, -that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do -or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm -work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any -Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. - - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers -including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists -because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from -people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. -To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 -and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive -Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent -permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. -Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered -throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at -809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email -business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact -information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official -page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact - -For additional contact information: - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To -SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any -particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. -To donate, please visit: -http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate - - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. -