Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/37

STEVENSON'S TWO MOTHERS one of those unique views which only a city built as Auld Reekie is, can command.

Mrs. Stevenson courageously faced her sorrow. She remained as of yore, bright and calm. Her son, I heard, when a grown man, recall how proud he was of her clear-cut features, her gracious manner when he went, under her wing, to children's parties. He boasted no child at these entertainments had so pretty a mother as he. Hers was a perennial beauty. With her cultured mind, her goodly presence, strangers who latterly met her would not credit she was nearing threescore and ten. The son who had gone before her was the theme she loved to hear others discourse on. Her unceasing interest in everything connected with him, her every thought given so wholly to him, made her listeners realise how great was her loss, how great was her love. She, so "austerely led," had never been otherwise than "well content." When people marvelled at her vivacity, she bravely replied she had surely had small cause to repine with a happy record of married life to dwell on, and forty-five years of her son's companionship granted to her. If her Louis had remained unknown to fame, to hear her speak of him would have drawn about her pleased listeners, for she told with such a spice of wit and graphicness, reminiscences of him, they fastened on the hearer's memory.

Alison Cunningham came to share with her the care of Louis when he was eighteen months old, and for stark love and kindness she too would have followed him into far countries. "Cummy," as her small charge promptly christened her, hailed from Torryburn, a village of white crowstepped houses, which lies facing the sun on the edge of the Forth. Her people had belonged for generations to this west neuk of Fife, and she had endless tales to tell of its local legendry and historic lore. She knew gruesome facts of resurrectionists who lifted from Torryburn's graveyard and its neighbour, Culross Abbey. Her collection of stories were doubtless a mine of wealth to young R. L. S., for, like her mistress, Cummy had the gift of picturing in words. She had had the advantage of a sound education, for to finish her schooling she went daily to Dunfermline five miles away. This distance she proudly records she covered in a marvellously short time, for Louis's "Comely Cummy," as he called her, along with her refined features, is still trig and active. When she went back for her holidays to red-roofed Torryburn she received and preserved many letters from her charge. Mrs. 27