Marget stood in the middle of the room pleating her black silk apron
between her fingers. She wanted to be asked to sit down, for she had
heard Ann and her mother talking of the removal from Glasgow, and she
felt that what she had to say on the subject was of value.
"Cornel and Mrs. Moncrieff 'll be comin' next week," she reminded them.
"I'm airin' the rooms an' pitten' bottles in the beds noo for I'm never
verra sure aboot unused rooms in a new hoose. Ye'll no' can write when
they're here, Miss Ann. It'll tak' ye a' yer time to crack wi' the
Cornel."
"Oh, but it's a long time till next week, Marget," Ann said, as she
went over to the bureau to address a parcel she had been wrapping up.
"I'll have finished my writing by then."
"Is that sweeties for the bairns?" Marget asked, eyeing the parcel and
sitting down as if by accident. "Ye'll file their stomachs."
"It's only Miss Smart's tablet. I never go to Priorsford without
getting them some tablet at their dear Miss Smart's. Rory said to me
solemnly the last time he was here, after a very successful visit to
the shop, 'There's nobody in England like Miss Smart.'"
"I dare say not," said Mrs. Douglas. "London shops don't encourage
small boys to poke in behind the counter. Miss Smart is so
good-natured that her shop is a sort of Aladdin's Cave to all young
Priorsford--Ann, have you remembered to put in my _Life_ about Alis and
the others being born?"
"Goodness gracious, I have not," cried Ann. "But I haven't got to that
time yet, have I? You shouldn't give me unnecessary frights, Mother.
Imagine leaving out Alis! Davie would have been annoyed. He was the
proudest young uncle--was he thirteen?--and Alis adored him. 'My saucy
Uncle Boy' she named him, when she could speak; and they were
inseparable. He was a mixture of playmate and kind old Nannie to her.
If anyone made Alis cry, in a moment Davie appeared and snatched her up
and dried her tears. 'You don't know how I love my Uncle Boy,' I heard
her telling some one. 'He's my favourite of men.' No, Davie wouldn't
like Alis forgotten."
"I used to hear Alis boast," Mrs. Douglas said, "about her young uncle
to Mary Elizabeth, and when Mary came to stay she warned her, 'He is my
Uncle Boy, you know, Mary, not yours,' and Mary said nothing until she
got Davie alone, then she whispered to him, 'Uncle Boy, will you be my
Daddy,' and thought she had scored off poor Alis completely."
"A' the bairns likit Davie," Marget put in. "He had sic a cheery face
an' he was aye lauchin'. I've seen me lauch mysel' in the kitchen when
I heard him lauchin' up the stairs. He fair hated to be vexed aboot
onything. Ye mind when you were ill, Mem, he took it awfu' ill-oot."
"All our troubles began after we left Glasgow," Ann said gloomily.
"All those years we had been extraordinary healthy; doctors would have
starved if they had had to depend on us. I know I used to look
pityingly at sick people and wonder to myself if they wouldn't be quite
well if they only made an effort. We talked bracingly about never
having people ill in bed in our house. 'We treat our patients on their
feet,' we said, with what must have been an insufferably superior air.
And then we had been so lucky for so long; the boys got everything they
tried for, and everything prospered with us, so I suppose it was time
we got a downing; but that didn't make it any easier when it came. We
left Glasgow knowing that father's health would always be an anxiety;
but we didn't bargain for your crocking up, Mums."
"I'm sure I didn't want to 'crock up' as you call it," said Mrs.
Douglas, looking aggrieved.
"Of course you didn't," Ann hastened to soothe her mother's ruffled
feelings. Then she began to laugh. "But it was rather like you,
Mother, to go and take a most obscure disease! We can laugh at it now
because you got better, but we put in a terrible year. First the
removing to Priorsford in May--taking the books alone was like removing
mountains, though we gave away armfuls to anyone who could be induced
to take them--and we were no sooner settled down in our new house than
you began to feel seedy. It began so gradually that we thought nothing
of it. You looked oddly yellow, and seemed to lose strength; but you
said it was nothing, and I was only too glad to believe it. When at
last we got the doctor he said you were very seriously ill, sent you to
bed, and got a trained nurse."
"Eh, I say," Marget began. "I'll never forget that winter. We juist
got fricht efter fricht. It was something awfu'. It was a guid thing
we left the new hoose and gaed to live wi' Mr. Jim."
"It was," said Ann; "we needed Jim beside us. Those awful attacks of
fever when you lay delirious for days at a time! We dragged you
through one turn and got you fairly well, only to see you take another.
It was most disheartening. No wonder poor Davie stamped with rage.
Doctors and nurses walked in and out of the house, specialists were
summoned from Edinburgh and Glasgow. All our money was spent on
physicians, and, like the woman in the Bible, you were none the better,
but rather the worse. None of them gave us any hope that you would
recover. One evening we were told you couldn't live over the night,
and Mark and Charlotte came flying up from London, only to find you
sitting up knitting a stocking! I never really believed that you
wouldn't get better. You weren't patient enough somehow; indeed, my
dear, there was nothing of the story-book touch about you at all when
you were ill. What a thrawn, resentful little patient you were! You
occupied your time when you were fairly well upbraiding me for keeping
the house so extravagantly. You said you were sure there was great
leakage. I'm sure there was, but I couldn't help it. It took me all
my time to nurse you and keep things comfortable in the house and see
that Father didn't over-exert himself. Marget's whole time was taken
up cooking--illness makes such a lot of extra work--and, fortunately,
we had a very good housemaid. But if you didn't shine as a patient, I
certainly didn't shine as a nurse. I'm afraid I hadn't the gentle,
womanly touch of the real ministering angel, smoothing pillows and such
like. I knew nothing about nursing, and you said I heaved hot-water
bags at you."
"So you did; but you were an excellent nurse for all that. But, oh, I
did feel so guilty keeping you hanging round me. It was more than a
year out of your life, just when you would have been having such a good
time."
"Oh," said Ann, "I don't grudge the year--I've had heaps of good times.
The only really bad times were when the attacks of high fever came and
you got unconscious; then you wouldn't let a nurse into the room. Jim
and I had to sit up with you for nights on end. But you were very
brave, and you never let your illness get on our nerves. You just
bounded up from an attack like an india-rubber ball. The doctors
simply gasped at you. You said good-bye to us so often that we began
to take it quite casually, merely saying, 'Well, have some beef-tea
just now, anyway'; and Father used to laugh and say, 'You'll live and
loup dykes yet.'"
"I'm sure I wasn't at all keen to live, Ann. When you get very far
down dying seems so simple and easy; but I did want to see Robbie
again. I think that kept me alive. When did you take me to London?
In spring, wasn't it?"
"Yes, in March. You weren't getting a bit better, and some one told
Mark about the vaccine treatment, and he thought it might be worth
trying. We were told that the journey would certainly kill you, but
you said, 'No such thing,' so off we set, you and I, all on a wild
March morning. You stood the journey splendidly; but two days after
you arrived you took the worst fever turn of all. The London doctors
came and told me you wouldn't live over the night, and I really thought
they were going to be right that time. I telephoned to Priorsford, and
it was Davie answered me, 'Is that you, Nana?' I was sorry to worry
the boy, but I had to tell you were very ill, and that I thought Jim
should come up by the night train. But you warstled through again, and
then Mark brought Sir Armstrong Weir to see you. We had seen several
London doctors, very glossy and well dressed, with beautiful cars, and
we wondered if this great Sir Armstrong would be even smarter. But the
great man came in a taxi, and wasn't at all well dressed--grey and bent
and very gentle."
"He looked old," Mrs. Douglas said; "but he couldn't have been so very,
for he told me his own mother was living. He was very kind to me."
"He cured you," said Ann.
"Oh no," said Mrs. Douglas.
"Well, it was partly his vaccine and partly your own marvellous pluck."
"Oh no. It wasn't pluck or vaccine or anything, but just that I had to
live more days on the earth."
"'Deed ay," said Marget, nodding in agreement with her mistress. "Ye
never did ony guid until ye had given up doctors a'thegither. As soon
as we got quat o' them ye began to improve."
"Now, now, Marget," said Ann, "you get carried away by your dislike of
doctors. We've been very thankful to see them many a time."
"Oh, they're a' richt for some things; but whenever it's ony thing
serious ye canna lippen to them. When there's onything wrang wi' yer
inside naebody can help ye but yer Maker."
Ann laughed. "What a gloomy view to take, Marget. You remind me of
the old lady who said that she gave to Dr. Barnardo's Homes 'because he
has no one to help him but God.' I won't let you malign doctors. The
best kind of doctor is about the highest type of human being. What are
you snorting at, Marget?"
"I could wish them a better job! Hoo onybody can like clartin' aboot
in folks' insides! Doctorin's a nesty job, and I'm glad nane o' oor
laddies took up wi't. They a' got clean, genteel jobs."
"Such as soldiering?"
"Oh, I'm no' heedin' muckle aboot sodgerin' aither," said Marget.
Then, turning to her mistress, she said, "As you say, Mem, nae doctor
can kill ye while there's life in the cup. D'ye think it was mebbe the
flittin' that brocht on yer trouble? Ye ken ye washt a' the china
yersel'."
Mrs. Douglas smiled at her. "All the years you've known me, Marget,
have you ever heard of housework doing me any harm? No. It was some
sort of blood-poisoning that went away as mysteriously as it came.
Though what I was spared for I know not. If I had died, how often you
would have said of me, 'She was taken from the evil to come.'"
"Poor darling!" said Ann. "Do you think you were spared simply that
you might receive evil things? Say, rather, that you were spared to
help the rest of us through the terrible times.... Father, mercifully,
had kept wonderfully well through your illness. He had accepted his
limitations and knew that he must not attempt a hill road, or fight
against a high wind, or move quickly; and really, looking at him, it
was difficult to believe that anything ailed him."
"But it must have been very bad for him, Ann, all the scares he got
with my illness. It's dreadful for me to think that the last year of
his life was made uncomfortable and distressed by me."
"But you mustn't think that. Even in those stormy days he seemed to
carry about with him a quiet, sunny peace. What a blessing we had him
through that time; the sight of him steadied one."
"And I'm sure I couldn't have lived through that time without him,"
Mrs. Douglas said; "although I sometimes got very cross with him
sitting reading with a pleased smile on his face when I felt so
miserable."
"I think he really enjoyed his restricted life," said Ann. "To be in
the open air was his delight, and he was able to take two short walks
every day and spend some time pottering in the garden, going lovingly
round his special treasures, those rock plants that he was trying to
persuade to grow on the old wall by the waterside. We wanted him to
drive, but he hated driving; he liked, he said, to feel the ground
under his feet. He never looked anything but well with his
fresh-coloured face."
"He got younger lookin'," Marget said. "I suppose it was no havin' a
kirk to worry aboot, the lines on his face got kind o' smoothed oot.
D'ye mind when he used to come into the room, Mem, you aye said it was
like a breath o' fresh air."
"Yes, Marget, I mind well. Neil Macdonald said when he was staying
with us once that when Father came into the room he had a look in his
eyes as if he had been on a watch-tower, 'As if--Neil said, in his
soft, Highland voice--'as if he had been looking across Jordan into
Canaan's green and pleasant land.'"
Ann smiled. "I know what he meant. D'ye remember Father's little
Baxter's _Saints' Rest_ that he carried about with him in his pocket
and read in quiet moments? And his passion for adventure books? I
think Jim got him every 'thriller' that was published. And the book on
Border Poets that he was writing? He always wrote a bit after tea. No
matter who was having tea with us, Father calmly turned when he was
finished to the bureau, pulled forward a chair--generally rumpling up
the rug, and then I cried, 'Oh, _Father_!'--and sat quietly writing
amid all the talk and laughter. He had nearly finished it when he
died.... That last week he seemed particularly well. He said his feet
had such a firm grip of the ground now. I didn't want him to go out
because it was stormy, and he held up one foot and said, 'Dear me,
girl, look at those _splendid_ soles!'"
Marget put her apron up to her eyes. "Eh, lassie, ye're whiles awfu'
like yer faither."
There was a silence in the room while the three women thought their own
thoughts.
At last Ann said, "What pathetic things we mortals are! That Saturday
night when we sat round the fire my heart was singing a song of
thankfulness. You were still frail, Mother, but you were wonderfully
better, and to have you with us again sitting by the fire knitting your
stocking was comfort unspeakable. Jim had been reading aloud the
_Vailima Letters_, and the letters to Barrie and about Barrie sent us
to _The Little Minister_, and I read to you Waster Luny's inimitable
remarks about ancestors, 'It's a queer thing that you and me his nae
ancestors.... They're as lost to sicht as a flagon-lid that's fa'en
ahint the dresser.' I forget how it goes, but Father enjoyed it
greatly. I think anything would have made us laugh that night, for the
mornin's post had brought us a letter from Robbie with the unexpected
news that he had been chosen for some special work and would be home
shortly--he thought in about three months' time. And as I looked at
you and Father smiling at each other in the firelight I said in my
heart, like Agag, '_Surely the bitterness of death is past!_' and the
next day Father died."
Mrs. Douglas sat silent with her head bowed, but Marget said, "Oh,
lassie! lassie!" and wept openly.
In a little while Ann spoke again:
"It isn't given to many to be 'happy on the occasion of his death,' but
Father was. His end was as gentle as his life. He slipped away
suddenly on the Sabbath afternoon, at the hour when his hands had so
often been stretched in benediction. He died in his boyhood's home.
The November sun was going down behind the solemn round-backed hills,
the familiar sound of the Tweed over its pebbles was in his ears, and
though he had to cross the dark river the waters weren't deep for him.
I think, like Mr. Standfast, he went over 'wellnigh dry shod.' And he
was taken before the storm broke. Three months later the cable came
that broke our hearts. Robbie had died after two days' illness on his
way to Bombay to get the steamer for home."