"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.' ..."