Ann and Her Mother

by O. Douglas

"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."