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.’