Chapter 1

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