Beauty From Ashes (9 page)

Pete, who had been deep in conversation with

Aunt Caroline, now turned to Anne. 107 “Mama, I know my submissive little sister must be starving. Could I be excused long enough to invite Fanny to stop playing and join us before the food’s all cold?”

With a somewhat shamefaced grin, Anne said, “By all means, bring dear Fanny to the table. I’ve been so occupied with my attractive partner here, I almost forgot her!”

“What does it feel like to be a mother, Aunt Anne?” Rebecca asked after Pete had gone for Fanny.

“Oh, it feels wonderful, Rebecca. You’ll find out someday when you’re a mother.”

“I hope I’m as pretty as my mother, don’t you?”

Anne laughed. “Well, your mother is a beautiful woman. I certainly know that.”

“Is she a lot younger than you, Aunt Anne?”

“Oh yes! And she looks even younger than she is.”

“Are you old?”

“Old? Some days, yes, I am. I look older by far than your mother, not only because I am, but

because—because—was

“I know.”

“You do?”

“You’ve had to cry so much since so many people you love have died.”

The bright child had dumbfounded Anne. Better just to wait and hope the conversation would shift again or that Pete would return soon with Fanny. For a long moment, Rebecca Isabella said nothing. In fact, after so much laughing and talking, there was near silence around the table as everyone’s attention turned to Anne’s father, who surprised them all by pulling himself to his feet without help.

“What’s Grandpapa going to do?” Rebecca asked as Pete and Fanny sat down. “He’s smiling. He must feel all right.”

“Of course he feels fine,” Pete said as Johnson took Fanny’s plate and began at once to serve her meal. “He’s got that look of half mischief and half determination. Grandpapa has something up his sleeve, Rebecca. Listen and we’ll all find out.”

When, to get their full attention, Papa tapped his knife against his half-filled wineglass, every eye was on him.

For a reason she definitely did not 109 understand at all, Anne felt abruptly nervous. Anxious. Papa was up to something.

On his feet, her father picked up the wineglass, bowed first to his old friend Thomas Spalding, and in a thick Scottish accent said with a bow, “I’m cer-rtain that my esteemed friend-riend and neighbor, Thomas Spalding, is vastly relieved that I have not instructed Johnson or my talented granddaughter Fanny to torment his delicate ears further with more of their splendid music.” He lifted the glass toward Fanny. “Your old grandfather commends you for the pleasure you’ve given us all, Fanny— except for my esteemed friend and neighbor, who was, alas, born without an ear for music.” Turning to Spalding, glass raised again, he added, “And I’d be remiss, Thomas, if I did not express all our gratitude for your admirable patience with those of us who revel in rhythm and melody.”

He bowed again to Thomas Spalding, who, though still seated, returned the courtesy with a deep nod and a smile.

“And now, beloved friends and members of my

family, I would like, with your permission, to propose a toast.”

Unexpectedly, John Couper got abruptly to his feet and in a firm voice said, “Sorry, Grandpapa, but you do not have our permission at all. At least, not mine.”

Because he was normally rather reserved, the boy surprised not only his mother but everyone else at the table. John Couper went on in such a determined way that no one said a word or even coughed or cleared a throat. “I admit, sir, that it is indeed you who normally proposes the first toast, but today is a day unlike any other. You have done what few men ever do. You have, strewing laughter and joy and good gifts and love along your way, reached your ninetieth birthday. And so it is with a great deal of happiness and some surprise at my own forwardness that I lift my glass, along with your guests who have come to honor you as the pillar of our entire family, the source of our humor and security, and the best playmate any child or grandchild ever had! To your continued health and happiness and to your very real sense of God!”

All around the table, everyone—even Rebecca Isabella, who raised her glass of water—

drank to Anne’s father, to Anne’s 111 sturdy rock, to the gentleman her John loved above all men.

John.

She had spoken his name aloud first thing this morning, even before she opened her eyes, before Pete, with whom she shared a Hopeton guest room, had come awake. Today, Papa’s ninetieth birthday, would have been the happiest of Anne’s life if only John could have been there to share it with her—with them all. If only he had been there to stand tall and handsome beside her at Caroline’s pianoforte to sing for Papa as she played. This morning, sitting up in bed, she would have given almost anything—almost everything—if only for five seconds or so John could stand just inside the bedroom door, blotting out the strangeness she still felt everywhere except at Lawrence in the safe shelter of their own little home. Even at Cannon’s Point the few times James Hamilton and his family had brought Papa for a few weeks’ visit, Anne had felt strange because John couldn’t be there ever again.

Even at this moment with her heart reaching toward Papa and swelling with pride in her own

articulate, handsome son, the strangeness was there in the midst of her remaining family, at the festive table of her brother James Hamilton.

Little Rebecca’s light tug at the sleeve of Anne’s gown brought her attention back to Papa. He was hugging his grandson and namesake, John Couper, in gratitude for the boy’s excellent toast and again holding his own glass in midair, ready, Anne knew, to make another try at a speech or at least a toast.

The thin, lined old face broke into an even wider smile as he began to speak. Anne, who had indeed always loved Papa’s speeches, was still aware, not only of the persistent strangeness even after the years without John, but of the wave of anxiety that had swept her when Papa first got to his feet before John Couper’s tasteful interruption. There was no reason for anxiety. Everyone seemed well and happy. Papa, especially, was having the time of his long life, but the nervousness held. Almost like a nameless dread.

Because a light chatter had begun to circle the table, Papa once more tapped his silver table knife on the wineglass he was still holding. Then, bowing elaborately in the direction of his grandson

John Couper, he began: “With the kind 113 permission of my handsome and already successful grandson John Couper Fraser, I will once more attempt to speak my piece.”

In response, on a musical laugh so like John’s it caught at Anne’s heart, her son began to applaud his grandfather with such love and respect that the applause spread noisily around the table. Papa was still standing, bowing again, looking so frail and shrunken that Anne’s heart squeezed. But the old man was beaming like a Lawrence sunrise, and after a slight cough, he cleared his throat and began to speak.

“Seldom at a loss for words, today I find myself fumbling a bit, but the conviction concerning what I want to say is so strong, I believe I must try, at least, to let all of you know—my cherished old friend Thomas Spalding and each member of my treasured family—that it is not my advanced age causing me to imagine there are four more blessed members of my family here gathered with us than merely those we can see. My wife, Rebecca, is here, my daughter Isabella is here, my grandchild Annie is here, and so close I can hear the singing of his silver voice is also

my son-in-law John Fraser. The song he is singing is `Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,` my Anne’s favorite.”

Anne could feel the silence pushing hard against her. For much of the decade since John had been gone—out of her sight, out of her hearing—she had struggled against even the memory of his voice singing their song: “Drink to Me Only.” On any morning when she chanced to awaken with the haunting melody running through her mind, she had forced herself at once to hum another tune. The grief remained too sharp, too keen a reminder of the agony of those early days and weeks without him when she had done well just to keep walking around. Surely, dear Papa had not meant to bring back that pain, but he had done it just the same and it took every ounce of strength she had to stay seated quietly in her chair.

“It just could be,” Papa went on, “that at age ninety—ten years shy of the century mark— I am so close to our absent and still sorely missed loved ones, I am enabled by Almighty God to sense their presence here with us. Either way, their presence brings me all joy and so I felt compelled to share it with you whose faces I can see

even with my dimming old eyes. The 115 kindest way I know to show all of you my devotion and my gratitude for this festive occasion is to assure you, with the same strong certainty I now experience, that even on that still-unknown day when I too take my leave of you, there will be no reason to weep, no reason to grieve. I will still be with you and the earthly parting will be brief, the reunion sure. As I stand here, bracing myself on the sturdy back of this dining chair, I want you to believe that I am at this minute here with you and also there with our loved ones, who have simply gone ahead to see that our rooms are ready.”

“Grandpapa, you’re making Mama cry!”

Pete’s voice, almost as shrill as when she used to shout nearly every sentence as a young girl, startled everyone around the table except Jock Couper. Anne watched her father turn his attention slowly, lovingly, to Pete. In all the years of her life, she had never seen Papa smile as he was smiling now at his red-haired, often feisty granddaughter who, as a boisterous child, had been dubbed Pete by her father, John, because he liked the nickname.

“I knew I’d make your lovely mother cry

if I shared my certainty, dear Pete, but now and then a mon knows the time has come. The time has come today for me to do all in my feeble power to set my beloved Anne straight—to set all of you straight. To set you on what just could turn out to be an entirely new course. A fresh way of seeing life, a fresh way of tackling the hard things life often brings. A fresh, sure way of seeing death as inseparably a part of life.”

For the first time since Papa had begun his strange but altogether gentle speech, Anne was aware of her nails biting into the palms of both hands. She had been sitting there in such a tight wad of pain and misery and rebellion at what her parent had been saying, both hands had become white-knuckled fists. Now, slowly, her fingers began to loosen, the fists to open. Both hands freed the blood to begin coursing again, and without realizing it, she had allowed each hand to drop to her lap—almost at ease.

Papa’s blue eyes, now faded with age, were too dim for him to have seen the change in her fingers, in her hands, but Eve, standing in the doorway, would surely insist that the old man was reading Anne’s mind because he was addressing Anne alone now.

“Anne, blessed Anne—firstborn 117 daughter to your mother and to me—you have lived these grief-scarred ten years just past through sheer grit and determination; through forcing yourself to fill the emptiness of losing John and our other loved ones by attending even more lovingly and more doggedly to the needs of those of us left to you. You have done it nobly and well, Daughter. I know your mother agrees. She and I are proud, pr-roud of you and so is John. So too is your sweet sister, Isabella, and your sensitive daughter Annie. I can promise all this to you. We are all of us poppin’ with pride and esteem for you. But we also begin, as of this moment, to beg you to ease off a little. You will miss your loved ones no less, but God has a generous dollop of extra strength and wisdom to give you once you can open your clenched hands and heart to receive it.”

Involuntarily, as though a strong arm had lifted her from the chair, Anne stood up. There were no strangers around the table. Heaven knows dear old Mr. Spalding had been like an uncle for all her long life. She felt no embarrassment that she had gotten so abruptly to her feet. She simply wondered what she

intended to do next.

“If I’ve upset you, Daughter, forgive me, but somehow as these minutes pass right now, I see you beginning to turn … ever so slowly perhaps … but you will turn, you are turning, beloved Anne. The clenched fist will become the open hand. Life for you will go on after the turning, and at least some of the pain I saw lacerate you when I mentioned John’s silver voice just now will carve room for new joy you want so much to share with your fine, fine bairns—the children of the love you still hold for that splendid man who chose you to be his wife. In a very real sense I can assure you—all of you—that our loved ones are here, cheering for us to believe that God can and will bring beauty from the ashes that must never be allowed to smother us again.”

No longer perplexed by what she meant to do next, Anne simply stood there for a few seconds, her pale blue eyes moving slowly, lovingly, from one concerned face to another. And then, with no effort whatever, she felt herself begin to light from within by her own smile.

The next thing she knew, she had begun to applaud her father’s words as did John Couper. When one after another joined in, none

seemed at all surprised that the 119 Birthday Boy, old Jock Couper himself, was also clapping his hands.

The birthday festivities took place on Friday. Jock Couper, accustomed throughout his long life to waking up no later than five in the morning, surprised himself by sleeping soundly on Saturday until after seven. He might not have aroused even then had not a soft, rapid knock sounded at his bedroom door at Hopeton.

Feeling a bit less stiff than usual on awaking, he pulled on his frayed damask dressing gown—a gift from Becca on his sixtieth birthday—and opened the door to find the other birthday person, six-year-old Rebecca Isabella.

“Well, good morning, fair lady,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “To what do I owe this unusual surprise visit?”

“To our birthdays, I guess,” the girl said, still standing in the hallway outside his room. “I hope I didn’t wake you, but I just had to know

something.”

“And what is that, Becca Belle? Would you like to come in my mussed-up room?”