"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 ma.n.u.script 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 s.e.x 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 n.o.ble 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-t.i.tle 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sage. Next moment a reproachful hand arrests her.
She is challenged with being out of bed, she denies it-standing in the pa.s.sage. 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 paean 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 st.i.tched 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.