Ann had been writing steadily for nearly an hour.
Her mother, watching her, said:
"I'm afraid, if you write so hard, your brain will go."
Ann, as if glad of the interruption, laid her pen in a china dish,
pushed away the sheets of paper, sighed deeply, and, rising, came over
to the fire.
"I know it will," she said. "I can feel it doing it. It's that old
_Life_ of yours--I can't make it sound right. Sir Walter Raleigh talks
somewhere of men whose true selves are almost completely obscured
beneath their ragged and incompetent speech. I'm afraid I'm concealing
you completely under my 'ragged and incompetent' words. If you live to
be ninety, as you threaten, it will be all right; the children will be
able to make their own estimate, but, if they have to depend on my
_Life_, I don't quite know what they'll make of you."
Ann began to laugh in a helpless way. "It's funny. I know so well
what impression I want to give, but when I try to write it down it's
just nothing--stilted, meaningless sentences. I want to make a picture
of Dr. Struthers. I've been trying for the last hour, labouring in
rowing, covering my brow in wrinkles, with no result. How would you
describe him?"
Mrs. Douglas thought for a minute. "It would be difficult to make a
true picture of him. If you simply told of the views that were his,
how he wouldn't sing a paraphrase, let alone a hymn, and held the
Sabbath day as something that must not be broken, you would give an
impression of narrowness and rigid conservatism that wouldn't at all be
the Dr. Struthers that we knew. When we heard that the Glasgow church
had a senior minister, we thought it was a drawback; your father rather
wondered how he would comport himself as a 'colleague and successor,'
but we didn't know Dr. Struthers then. Sometimes, in Glasgow, when we
were inclined to regret Kirkcaple and the flourishing congregation, and
the peaceful time we enjoyed there--but when I say peaceful I mean only
comparatively, no minister's wife ever attains to peace in this
world!--your father would say, 'But if we had stayed in Kirkcaple we
would never have known Dr. Struthers,' and that closed the matter.
When I first met him I thought he was more like some fresh, hearty old
country laird than a parson. But he was really very frail, and to walk
even a short distance was a great effort. He had a place about fifty
miles from Glasgow, Langlands, and as long as he was able he came to
preach in Martyrs about once a month. The old congregation adored to
have him come, but the newcomers, who had no romance about the old man,
thought his sermons much too long. And they were too long as sermons
go now. We are not the patient listeners our forefathers were. Dr.
Struthers once said to me that no man could do justice to a subject
under fifty-five minutes, and we used sometimes to think that he was
done before his allotted time, but he just went on."
"We children dearly loved Dr. Struthers," said Ann; "but we did not
appreciate the length of his sermons. My friend, Mrs. Smail--the
butcher's wife, you remember?--used to sit with a most forlorn face
while he preached; thinking, I expect, that she would be half an hour
late, and that the numerous young Smails would have fallen in the fire.
Dear me, it's a long time since I thought of Mrs. Smail. I liked her
very much. There was a sort of bond of sympathy between us, and she
invited me sometimes to tea-parties where we got tea and cookies and
penny cakes and hot roast beef. I never learned to appreciate the
combination, but the rest of the company seemed to enjoy it. I sat
beside one gentleman who, after doing full justice to the meal, wiped
his forehead with a red silk handkerchief, and, turning to me, said, 'A
grand house this for flesh.' After the 'flesh' we all contributed
songs and recitations--great evenings. Well, what I mean to say is
that Mrs. Smail represented the new people who were impatient of Dr.
Struthers and impatient of all the old traditions of the church which
the original members clung to with such pathetic loyalty."
"But in time," said Mrs. Douglas, "the new-comers got to see how very
fine the old man was, and everybody was sorry when he got too frail to
preach. It was quite extraordinary how fond you children were of him,
for he never told you stories or played with you."
"No," said Ann thoughtfully, "he never did anything to make himself
popular. We didn't expect it any more than we would have expected a
god from Mount Olympus to jest with a mortal. They say we needs must
love the highest when we see it, but that isn't true; often the highest
simply irritates. I think it was his simple goodness that made us fond
of him, and a certain understanding and sympathy that he had for bad
children. And he never talked down to us or became facetious."
Mrs. Douglas nodded. "I know. Children like to be taken seriously,
and Dr. Struthers was certainly not given to making fun of them."
Ann clasped her hands round her knees and looked into the fire.
"One thing we liked about the Glasgow Sundays was that we stayed down
in the vestry for lunch. It was our weekly picnic, and the fact that
it was eaten in the church premises gave a touch of solemnity to the
occasion. When Dr. Struthers was preaching, we had a more elaborate
meal. Strong beef-tea was made at home and brought down in a bottle to
be heated, for he was often very exhausted after preaching. One
never-to-be-forgotten day I was told to watch the pan of beef-tea
heating, and I had evidently begun to dream, for the pan fell into the
fire and the contents were lost. I felt as badly about it as any of
you, but I only made a sulky face. I knew it was a real deprivation
for the old man, though he made light of it, and said cocoa would be a
nice change, and I felt very unhappy all through lunch. There was a
particularly fine orange among some apples on a plate, and you asked
Dr. Struthers to take it, but he looked across at my small sullen face
and said, with that most delightful smile of his, 'I think we must give
this orange to Ann.' I never forgot the way he did it; the 'pretty and
sweet manner' of it quite conquered me and made me far sorrier for my
carelessness than any scolding would have done. I don't believe
scoldings ever do any good, only harm."
"Some children," said Mrs. Douglas, "are the better of scoldings. Mark
always 'took a telling,' but the more you and Robbie were scolded, the
worse you got.... Generally Dr. Struthers stayed with his daughter,
but now and again he stayed with us. We liked having him, but it made
rather an upheaval in our modest establishment. You see, he had to
bring his man, Samuel Thomson, with him, and Samuel Thomson was such a
very superior, silver-haired, apple-cheeked gentleman's gentleman, we
could hardly ask him to take his meals in the kitchen, so the boys'
study had to be given up to him. Davie was very fond of sitting with
him, and I once overhead Samuel Thomson reading aloud to him from the
Bible some Old Testament story, and commenting on what he read. Those
were grand angels, Master David,' he was saying. It was the time when
Davie cared for nothing but to be like a jockey."
"'Angels!' he said, 'I thought you were talking about horses,' and he
straddled away in deep disgust."
Ann laughed. "Davie was very much against all things religious at that
time, and he wouldn't even say his prayers. Marget used to toil up
from the kitchen to reason with him, and when he heard her coming he
would give a wicked wallop in his bed and say, 'That's Marget comin' to
convert me.' You know, Mother, in some ways Davie was a much more
abandoned character than we were as children. We reverenced the
Covenanters, but Davie said he preferred Claverhouse, and most
blasphemously said of John Brown, of Priesthill--he must have got the
expression from Marget--'I think John Brown was a _gey lawd_.'
Speaking of conversion, I think Dr. Struthers was the only person we
didn't mind 'speaking personally' to us. We realised that he, like
Nehemiah, 'feared the Lord above many.' When Mark told him he meant to
go to Oxford and then to the Bar, he said, 'Look higher than the
Woolsack, Mark.' He spoke kindly to Jeanie Tod about her home in
Kirkcaple, and said, 'Do you ever think where you are going?' and I
shall always remember how one day he laid his big soft hand on my
unruly head and said, 'Little Ann, _take Jesus_.' Do you remember one
day when he was preaching I announced that I had a sore throat and
couldn't possibly go to church, and was allowed to remain at home? Dr.
Struthers missed me, and asked why I wasn't there, and you--not greatly
believing, I daresay, in the excuse--said I had a sore throat. Mark
rushed home between services to tell me that Dr. Struthers had prayed
for me in church, prayed that my bodily affliction might pass from me!
Guiltily aware of perfect health--my sore throat hadn't kept me from
eating apples and reading a story-book--I didn't know what awful
consequences the prayer might have. Anyway, I flew upstairs, flung on
my coat and hat, and was in my place for the afternoon service,
determined to ward off any more petitions on my behalf. But I was
never frightened for Dr. Struthers after I found he liked adventure
books and didn't even mind the swear words. He was surely a very rich
man, Mother? Ministers don't as a rule have places like Langlands, and
man-servants and maid-servants. A house and a wife, and a stranger
within the gates are about all they ever attain to."
"Yes, he was rich, but I never met anyone who gave one so little an
impression of great possessions. Having his treasure laid up where
thieves cannot break through and steal, he cared little for the gold of
this world. He gave largely, but so unobtrusively that it wasn't until
his death that we realised the extent of his givings. He was the
humblest of men, lowly and a peacemaker."
"Once," said Ann, "Robbie and Jim and I went from Etterick to spend the
day at Langlands. It was after Mrs. Struthers died, and Miss Calder
kept house. I somehow think we weren't expected. There was something
queer about it, anyway, and Miss Calder, although she was kind, as she
always was, looked very worried. She had some engagement in the
village that morning, so she sent us up the hill to play till luncheon.
We went obediently up the hill, but as soon as we saw Miss Calder walk
down the avenue, back we pranced. Samuel Thomson saw us, and,
conducting us to the croquet lawn, advised us to have a game. He
helped us to put out the hoops, and we began to play. Unfortunately
Robbie and I soon fell into a discussion about the right and wrong way
to play, and I regret to say I kicked Robbie, who at once retaliated,
and the next thing the horrified eyes of Samuel Thornton saw was Robbie
and me hitting one another with croquet mallets. It was only the
beginning of a thoroughly ill-spent day, and if Dr. Struthers and Miss
Calder hadn't been the most patient and forgiving of people we would
never have been asked back."
"It was odd," said Mrs. Douglas; "but you and Robbie could never behave
properly if you were together. I wonder I was so rash as to let you go
away for a whole day, and to Langlands of all places. Its beautiful
tidiness seemed to act on you in a pernicious way. It was always a
treat to me to go to Langlands. I enjoyed the beauty and the peace of
it, and it seemed exactly the right setting for Dr. Struthers. I was
thankful that, when the end came, it came at Langlands, suddenly,
painlessly, and most fittingly on the Sabbath day. 'I am going,' he
said to Samuel Thomson, and in a minute he was gone, almost 'translated
unaware.'"
"What a beautiful way to die," said Ann. "His task accomplished and
the long day done. Without weariness of waiting, with no pain of
parting, suddenly to find his boat in the harbour and to see his Pilot
face to face."