The Woman Thou Gavest Me | Page 8

hold my breath and hide my head
behind my mother's gown.

I think my mother must have suffered both from my fear of my father
and from my father's indifference to me, for she made many efforts to
reconcile him to my existence. Some of her innocent schemes, as I
recall them now, seem very sweet but very pitiful. She took pride, for
instance, in my hair, which was jet black even when I was a child, and
she used to part it in the middle and brush it smooth over my forehead
in the manner of the Madonna, and one day, when my father was with
us, she drew me forward and said:
"Don't you think our Mary is going to be very pretty? A little like the
pictures of Our Lady, perhaps--don't you think so, Daniel?"
Whereupon my father laughed rather derisively and answered:
"Pretty, is she? Like the Virgin, eh? Well, well!"
I was always fond of music, and my mother used to teach me to sing to
a little upright piano which she was allowed to keep in her room, and
on another day she said:
"Do you know our Mary has such a beautiful voice, dear? So sweet and
pure that when I close my eyes I could almost think it is an angel
singing."
Whereupon my father laughed as before, and answered:
"A voice, has she? Like an angel's, is it? What next, I wonder?"
My mother made most of my clothes. There was no need for her to do
so, but in the absence of household duties I suppose it stimulated the
tenderness which all mothers feel in covering the little limbs they love;
and one day, having made a velvet frock for me, from a design in an
old pattern book of coloured prints, which left the legs and neck and
arms very bare, she said:
"Isn't our Mary a little lady? But she will always look like a lady,
whatever she is dressed in."

And then my father laughed still more contemptuously and replied,
"Her grandmother weeded turnips in the fields though--ninepence a day
dry days, and sixpence all weathers."
My mother was deeply religious, never allowing a day to pass without
kneeling on her prayer-stool before the image of the Virgin, and one
day I heard her tell my father that when I was a little mite, scarcely able
to speak, she found me kneeling in my cot with my doll perched up
before me, moving my lips as if saying my prayers and looking up at
the ceiling with a rapt expression.
"But she has always had such big, beautiful, religious eyes, and I
shouldn't wonder if she becomes a Nun some day!"
"A nun, eh? Maybe so. But I take no stock in the nun business
anyway," said my father.
Whereupon my mother's lips moved as if she were saying "No,
dearest," but her dear, sweet pride was crushed and she could go no
farther.

FOURTH CHAPTER
There was a whole colony on the ground floor of our house who, like
my father, could not reconcile themselves to my existence, and the head
of them was Aunt Bridget.
She had been married, soon after the marriage of my mother, to one
Colonel MacLeod, a middle-aged officer on half-pay, a widower, a
Belfast Irishman, and a tavern companion of my maternal grandfather.
But the Colonel had died within a year, leaving Aunt Bridget with one
child of her own, a girl, as well as a daughter of his wife by the former
marriage. As this happened about the time of my birth, when it became
obvious that my mother was to be an invalid, my father invited Aunt
Bridget to come to his house as housekeeper, and she came, and
brought her children with her.

Her rule from the outset had been as hard as might have been expected
from one who prided herself on her self-command--a quality that
covered everybody, including my mother and me, and was only subject
to softening in favour of her own offspring.
Aunt Bridget's own daughter, a year older than myself, was a fair child
with light grey eyes, round cheeks of the colour of ripe apples, and long
yellow hair that was carefully combed and curled. Her name was Betsy,
which was extended by her mother to Betsy Beauty. She was usually
dressed in a muslin frock with a sash of light blue ribbon, and being
understood to be delicate was constantly indulged and nearly always
eating, and giving herself generally the airs of the daughter of the
house.
Aunt Bridget's step-daughter, ten years older, was a gaunt, ungainly girl
with red hair and irregular features. Her name was Nessy, and, having
an instinctive sense of her dependent position, she was very humble
and