Margaret Ogilvy
CHAPTER I
HOW MY MOTHER GOT HER SOFT FACE
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 good-bye
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.