"Do I ever read at this time of day?"
"What is that in your lap?"
"Just my ap.r.o.n."
"Is that a book beneath the ap.r.o.n?"
"It might be a book."
"Let me see."
"Go away with you to your work."
But I lifted the ap.r.o.n. "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 a.s.surances, 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.