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 la.s.sie 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 la.s.sie 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 Sa.s.senach 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ap.r.o.n 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?"