"... It was our favourite occupation, your father's and mine, when we
had an hour together by the fire, to dream of the good times we would
have when he retired. When we got very tired of plodding along with
our faces against the wind, when people seemed indifferent about our
efforts and ungrateful, when something we had taken immense pains about
proved a failure, when term-time came and family after family whom we
had learned to count on moved away to outlying suburbs, leaving gaps
that couldn't be filled, your father would say to me, 'Never mind,
Nell; it'll be all over some day and we'll get away to the country,'
and we would talk about and plan what we would do when we had no longer
a congregation to tend. But, inside me, I was always sceptical about
the dream ever coming true. I knew he wouldn't leave his work until he
had to; and I had visions of going on and on until we were old and
grey-headed. One should never let oneself weary in this world, for
everything stops so soon."
Ann sat on the fender stool sharpening a pencil, very absorbed in the
point she was making. When it was done to her satisfaction she turned
round to her mother.
"Did you really ever weary in well-doing, Mother? Ah, well! 'Rejoice
that ye have time to weary in.' But it was a pretty uphill job you and
Father had in that district. There was one thing, though the
congregation was small it was tremendously appreciative. You remember
Mr. Gardner, the elder? I used to like to watch his face when Father
preached--it was a study. He had the nicest little doggy face, with
honesty written all over it. And his friend, great big Mr. Law who sat
in the seat behind him--he was exactly my idea of the Village
Blacksmith."
"Mr. Law should have been put into a book," Mrs. Douglas said. "Don't
you remember how he used to stand up and square his great shoulders and
speak in broad Lowland Scots?"
"I should think so. Mr. Law's addresses were our great delight. He
began one on Evolution with: 'Some folk say that oor great-grandfathers
hoppit aboot on the branches.' He always talked of 'the Apostle Jims,'
and do you remember the description he gave us of some picture he had
seen of the 'Last Judgment,' by Michael Angelo? I don't know where
this masterpiece is hung, but Mr. Law said that it depicted 'Michael
Angelo creepin' oot o' a hole aneath the throne and a look o' hesitancy
on the face of God!' And he told us one day that he was sure the
Apostle Paul had never been to Scotland or he most certainly would have
put on record that Ben Lomond was the finest hill that he had ever set
eyes on."
Mrs. Douglas smiled. "Mr. Law was a fine man and a most original
speaker, but he felt so strongly on certain things that he was apt to
upset other members."
"Ah," said Ann, shaking her head wisely, "one dreads that class of lad
in a church."
"John Gardner, on the other hand," Mrs. Douglas went on, "was an
undiluted blessing in the church. He was willing to do--indeed he
liked doing--all the work that brought no kudos, all the dull jobs that
most people try to evade. And he was always there. No matter how bad
the night, you were always sure that his 'doggy' face would beam on
you. 'Thank God,' your father used to say, 'thank God for the faithful
few.'"
"Yes," said Ann. "I remember I was discussing with the boys, in our
usual rather irreverent way, who of the people we knew would be
'farthest ben' in the next world. We denied admittance to quite a
number of people famous for their good works; others, we thought, might
just scrape in. 'But,' said Mark, 'I back Father and Dr. Struthers and
wee Gardner to be sitting on the very next steps of the Throne.'"
"Oh, Ann!" her mother expostulated. "I never did like the way you and
the boys spoke of sacred things; it sounded so flippant. But 'wee
Gardner,' as you call him, was a great gift to us. Oh, and there were
others almost as good. And the young men and women were really rather
special."
"They were," said Ann. "The books they read and the wideness of their
interests put me to shame. You know, Mother, it must have been very
interesting for them, for they found their whole social life in the
church. What fun they had at the social meetings! I almost envied
them. At one social a girl said to me that she wished the men would
come up--I suppose they were talking and smoking in the lower hall--and
I said, stupidly, that I thought it was nicer without the men, and the
girl replied with some sagacity, 'you wouldn't say that if they were
your own kind of men.' A church is a great matchmaker. Old Mrs.
Buchanan, talking one day of the young men and maidens in the choir,
said, 'They pair _just like doos_.' There is one good thing about a
small congregation--everybody knows everybody else. We were like one
big family. It is touching to hear them talk now about those days;
they look back on them as a sort of Golden Age. And the presents they
gave us! And they were so poor. Each of the boys got a gold watch and
chain when they left home, and when I went to India I had quite a
collection of keepsakes, some very odd, but all greatly valued by me,
their owner. Mother, why are you sitting 'horn idle,' as Marget would
say? Have you finished your knitting?"
Mrs. Douglas looked at her idle hands. "My knitting is like Penelope's
web," she said; "there is no end to it. I'm simply sitting idle for a
change, sitting thinking about days that are past, and about people I
shall never see again on this side of time. I think a great deal of
Martyrs, and I feel very humble when I think of the affection and
loyalty given to us."
"But, Mother, you can't have liked everybody in the church. The
thing's not possible. Think of Mr. Philip Scott and the 'acid' he
thinks necessary, and say something really unkind.... You know you
never liked Mrs. Marshall, the elder's wife--she was a terrible
tale-bearer, and always making mischief."
"Yes, she was, poor body. But, Ann, she was kind when Rosamund was
ill, and----"
Ann threw up her hands. "Mother, you are hopeless. I'm not going to
try to put any acid into you. You're just like strawberry jam. I'm
afraid I've got your share of acid as well as my own, that's why I've
such an 'ill-scrapit tongue.'"
But Mrs. Douglas wasn't listening. She was looking before her,
dreaming. Presently she said:
"Ann, it doesn't seem a very complimentary thing to say to you, but I
look back on the winter you were in India with very great pleasure. We
were quite alone, your father and I, for the first time almost since we
were married, and he often said, laughing, 'We're never better than
when we're alone, Nell.' The letters were such a pleasure--Mark's
every morning, Jim's every other morning, a curious scrawl from little
Davie once a week, and on Saturday Robbie's letter and your great
budget. Oh, Ann, Ann, why was I not deliriously happy? All of you
well, all of you prospering, my man beside me, and life full of
sunlight."
"Ay, Mother, you should have been down on your knees thanking heaven
fasting--and if the truth were known I dare say you were. But it's
only afterwards you realise how happy you have been!"
"Yes, afterwards," said Mrs. Douglas. "It was when you came home from
India that you noticed that your father was failing. Living with him I
had noticed nothing."
"There was hardly anything to notice. He didn't walk with the same
light step. He sometimes wondered why his congregation always chose to
live up four flights of stairs, and one night he said to me, half
laughing, half serious: 'I'm beginning to be afraid of that which is
high.' But he was well for a year or two after that, till he had the
bad heart attack, and the doctor warned us that it was time he was
thinking of giving up his work."
Ann got up and stood with both hands on the mantelshelf looking into
the fire.
"I remember," she went on, "the curious unreal feeling I had, as if the
solid earth had somehow given way beneath my feet when I realised that
Father's life was in danger. And then, when days and weeks passed, and
he didn't seem to get worse, we just put the thought away from us and
told ourselves that doctors were often mistaken, and that if he took
reasonable care all would be well."
"He was only sixty-one," Mrs. Douglas said, "and the doctors assured us
that if he gave up preaching he might have years of fairly good health.
He had worked himself done. Twenty-two years in Glasgow had been too
much for him."
Ann nodded. "He never said a word, but the fact was Father hated
cities. Rosamund used to call the Park 'the policeman's country,'
because of the notices to keep off the grass, and she called Etterick
'God's country.' Father longed all the time for 'God's country.' He
would have been supremely happy as minister of some moorland place,
with time to write, and time to love his books and flowers, and instead
he had to spend his days toiling up and down endless stairs, never
getting away from the sight of squalor and misery, doing the King's
work through the unfeatured years. And yet he was perfectly content.
He was able to find a Sabbath stillness in the noise, and from some
hidden spring he could draw wells of living water to make in that
dreary place a garden 'bright with dawn and dew' to refresh a haggard
world.... You must have felt very bad about leaving Martyrs,
Mother?--after all those years."
"Oh.... We felt it to be almost treachery on our part to leave some of
those poor people. They depended on us. We considered whether we
ought to stay on in Glasgow and still help a little, unofficially, as
it were, but you were all against that, and finally we took a house in
Priorsford to be near Jim. I was glad when it was settled, and glad
when those last months in Glasgow were over. It was miserable work
dismantling the house and packing up and saying good-bye."
"Everything has an end," said Ann, "'and a pudden has twa,' to quote
Marget's favourite saying. But I could hardly believe we were finished
with Martyrs, that we would tramp no more that long road, and sit no
more in that back pew to the side of the pulpit, and look up at Father
Sunday after Sunday--Mother, surely Father was a very good preacher?"
Mrs. Douglas sat up very straight, as if she were challenging anyone to
contradict her, and said proudly: "He was the best preacher I ever
heard. And if he were here he would laugh at me for saying so."
"He would," said Ann; "but I think I agree with you."
"A communion in Martyrs," her mother went on; "what an occasion it was!
Except for length--our services were always short--I expect it was the
same service that the Covenanters held, fearfully, as hunted men.
'Following the custom of our fathers'--can't you hear him say it?--your
father always 'fenced' the tables and read the warrant. Then we sung
those most mournful words:
''Twas on that night when doomed to know
The eager rage of every foe';
and your father took his place among the elders round the table in the
choir seat. He always held a slice of the bread, and, breaking it,
said, 'Mark the breaking of the bread,' and after the tables were
served he said a few concluding words. I used to listen for his voice
falling on the stillness--'Communicants!' It seemed to me very
beautiful."
"I know. But what will always remain with me is the way he said the
Benediction. He was a very vigorous preacher, my father. There was no
settling down to sleep 'under' him. Sometimes he would describe the
fate of those who wilfully refused salvation, very sadly, very
solemnly, and then he would shut the big Bible and, leaning over the
side of the pulpit, he would say, 'But, brethren, I am persuaded better
things of you.' Then came the Benediction, and I listened for the
swish of the silk of the Geneva gown as he stretched his arms wide over
the people, and his voice came healing, soothing, restful as sleep:
'May the peace of God which passeth all understanding...' On that last
Sunday--the last time he ever preached--he gave us no farewell words,
and I was thankful, for he had an uncanny gift of pathos; but he
offered us, as he had offered us every time he preached in that pulpit,
Christ and Him crucified. We sang 'Part in Peace,' and then he looked
round the church, slowly, searchingly, round the wide galleries and
through the area. Was he seeing again all those brave old figures who
had so loyally held up his hands until they had to step out into the
Unknown? In twenty-two years one sees many go. Then he held out his
arms--the swish of the Geneva gown--and for the last time the listeners
heard that golden voice saying, 'May the peace of God which passeth all
understanding keep your hearts and minds.' ..."
There were tears standing in Ann's grey eyes as she said, "I know it's
a ridiculous thing to say, but it seems to me that the people who knew
Father and were blessed by him have a better idea of what that peace
means--oh, Mother, aren't we a couple of foolish women sitting lauding
our own!"
"No," Mrs. Douglas said stoutly; "we're not. If Martyrs' people were
in the room now I'm sure they would say 'Amen' to all you say of your
father. And I lived with him for thirty-four years and I couldn't
imagine a better man. He was a saint, and yet he was human and funny
and most lovable, and that isn't too common a combination. There can
be nothing more terrible than to be married to a sanctimonious saint.
Imagine being _forgiven_ all the time! Every time you lost your temper
or spoke maliciously or unadvisedly, to see a pained expression on his
face!"
"It would drive one to crime," said Ann solemnly.