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 goodbye
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.
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