Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/38

STEVENSON'S TWO MOTHERS Stevenson wrote these early epistles to little Loo's dictation. They are full of childish reiterations, hopes that his Cummy will come back soon, and questions as to the people in her old world village she had made him acquainted with by her descriptions. He informs her, "Catherine sleeps in my room because Papa said it," and that Papa said it, has an authoritative brevity which even His Majesty Louis the Worshipped did not gainsay. At the end of one letter he signs himself "Your loving Robert Louis Stevenson," but fearing this full and then seldom used title sounded stiff and estranged, he ordered his mother between the "loving" and his baptismal name to insert "little son," knowing that these two short words would act as a magnet on Cummy, and insure her return, despite the attractions of that El Dorado he longed to visit—Torryburn. Cummy tells how, when ailing, he would, after tossing sleepless, desire to hear comforting words from Scripture read, to be a rod and staff to him in the darksome, terror-haunted vale of night. Willingly good Cummy complied with his wish, and read till she saw through her "kind voice " he had found rest. In the morning, when he awoke refreshed, and the sun shone into his room, he again issued his constant command, "Read to me, Cummy." His nurse, knowing well his fears with the shadows of night had flown away, and the "Old, Old Story" would be laid aside till he again traversed the "uneven land," with well-pretended ignorance would ask, "What chapter will I read to you, my laddie?" But her laddie no longer a saint would be, and with the unhypocritical honesty of childhood replied, "Why, Cummy, it's daylight now; put away the Bible and reach over for that new book of Ballantyne's." Early on him came the desire to write. Cummy depicts how he often slipped his hand into hers when he was a petticoated boy of three and four, and dragged her off to the nursery, signalled to her to lock the door, and putting his finger to his lips to enjoin secrecy, whispered as loud as a stage conspirator, "I've got a story to tell, Cummy; you write it." "He just havered," says Cummy, smiling yet at the recollection of her little lad, whose keen eyes glowed all the darker then in contrast with the childish yellow hair which crowned his head. Cummy entered heartily into the mystery and conspiracy of the secretive tale-maker. His women-folk were always slavishly good-humoured to their young autocrat, doing his whimsical bidding, when practicable, without hesitation. "I wrote down every word he spoke," says Cummy, "it pleased the

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