'Thirty pounds is what he will have to pay the first year, and ten pounds a year after that. You think it's a lot o' siller? Oh no, you're mista'en - it's nothing ava. For the third part of thirty pounds you could rent a four-roomed house, but what is a four-roomed house, what is thirty pounds, compared to the glory of being a member of a club? Where does the glory come in? Sal, you needna ask me, I'm just a doited auld stock that never set foot in a club, so it's little I ken about glory. But I may tell you if you bide in London and canna become member of a club, the best you can do is to tie a rope round your neck and slip out of the world. What use are they? Oh, they're terrible useful. You see it doesna do for a man in London to eat his dinner in his lodgings. Other men shake their heads at him. He maun away to his club if he is to be respected. Does he get good dinners at the club? Oh, they cow!
You get no common beef at clubs; there is a manzy of different things all sauced up to be unlike themsels. Even the potatoes daurna look like potatoes. If the food in a club looks like what it is, the members run about, flinging up their hands and crying, "Woe is me!" Then this is another thing, you get your letters sent to the club instead of to your lodgings. You see you would get them sooner at your lodgings, and you may have to trudge weary miles to the club for them, but that's a great advantage, and cheap at thirty pounds, is it no'? I wonder they can do it at the price.'
My wisest policy was to remain downstairs when these withering blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence.
'I never saw you so pugnacious before, mother.'
'Oh,' she would reply promptly, 'you canna expect me to be sharp in the uptake when I am no' a member of a club.'
'But the difficulty is in becoming a member. They are very particular about whom they elect, and I daresay I shall not get in.'
'Well, I'm but a poor crittur (not being member of a club), but I think I can tell you to make your mind easy on that head. You'll get in, I'se uphaud - and your thirty pounds will get in, too.'
'If I get in it will be because the editor is supporting me.'
'It's the first ill thing I ever heard of him.'
'You don't think he is to get any of the thirty pounds, do you?'
''Deed if I did I should be better pleased, for he has been a good friend to us, but what maddens me is that every penny of it should go to those bare-faced scoundrels.'
'What bare-faced scoundrels?'
'Them that have the club.'
'But all the members have the club between them.'
'Havers! I'm no' to be catched with chaff.'
'But don't you believe me?'
'I believe they've filled your head with their stories till you swallow whatever they tell you. If the place belongs to the members, why do they have to pay thirty pounds?'
'To keep it going.'
'They dinna have to pay for their dinners, then?'
'Oh yes, they have to pay extra for dinner.'
'And a gey black price, I'm thinking.'
'Well, five or six shillings.'
'Is that all? Losh, it's nothing, I wonder they dinna raise the price.'
Nevertheless my mother was of a sex that scorned prejudice, and, dropping sarcasm, she would at times cross-examine me as if her mind was not yet made up. 'Tell me this, if you were to fall ill, would you be paid a weekly allowance out of the club?'
No, it was not that kind of club.
'I see. Well, I am just trying to find out what kind of club it is. Do you get anything out of it for accidents?'
Not a penny.
'Anything at New Year's time?'
Not so much as a goose.
'Is there any one mortal thing you get free out of that club?'
There was not one mortal thing.
'And thirty pounds is what you pay for this?'
If the committee elected me.
'How many are in the committee?'
About a dozen, I thought.
'A dozen! Ay, ay, that makes two pound ten apiece.'
When I was elected I thought it wisdom to send my sister upstairs with the news. My mother was ironing, and made no comment, unless with the iron, which I could hear rattling more violently in its box. Presently I heard her laughing - at me undoubtedly, but she had recovered control over her face before she came downstairs to congratulate me sarcastically. This was grand news, she said without a twinkle, and I must write and thank the committee, the noble critturs. I saw behind her mask, and maintained a dignified silence, but she would have another shot at me. 'And tell them,' she said from the door, 'you were doubtful of being elected, but your auld mother had aye a mighty confidence they would snick you in.' I heard her laughing softly as she went up the stair, but though I had provided her with a joke I knew she was burning to tell the committee what she thought of them.
Money, you see, meant so much to her, though even at her poorest she was the most cheerful giver. In the old days, when the article arrived, she did not read it at once, she first counted the lines to discover what we should get for it - she and the daughter who was so dear to her had calculated the payment per line, and I remember once overhearing a discussion between them about whether that sub-title meant another sixpence. Yes, she knew the value of money; she had always in the end got the things she wanted, but now she could get them more easily, and it turned her simple life into a fairy tale. So often in those days she went down suddenly upon her knees; we would come upon her thus, and go away noiselessly.
After her death I found that she had preserved in a little box, with a photograph of me as a child, the envelopes which had contained my first cheques. There was a little ribbon round them.
