Angel Harp: A Novel

by Michael Phillips

  “I know the joy I felt when I saw you and Alasdair embrace. God’s joy must be much greater. And the change in Alasdair is truly remarkable.”

  “Healing and reconciliation do that to people. They are freeing, liberating, exuberating!”

  “There is no such word as that!” I laughed.

  “I know. I just made it up! But really, there is nothing quite so wonderful as walls coming down and people coming together. It is amazing that more people don’t seek that joy when it is so easily attainable.”

  Chapter Sixty

  Fall

  I must away love, I can no longer tarry,

  This morning’s tempest I have to cross,

  I must be guided without a stumble,

  Into the arms I love the most.

  —“The Night Visiting Song”

  The weeks passed into a month, then six weeks. Gwendolyn turned thirteen, the first birthday Alasdair had celebrated with her.

  Even in the increasingly blustery fall weather, Gwendolyn was better. She and I took to walking on the castle grounds and occasionally along the sea. Every time we went into town I asked if she wanted to visit her aunt Olivia, but she never did. She and Alasdair began to speak of another voyage, but Alasdair was concerned for her health. It began to look as if it would have to wait until the following spring.

  I had spoken with the lady who owned my cottage and told her I would be moving to a flat in the village. She asked if it was because of money and I said it was. She said that I had been such a good and pleasant tenant, and that since the tourist season was now past I could stay if I wanted for three hundred pounds a month, far less than what I had been paying.

  I agreed and so remained where I was. I had till almost the end of the year to get permission to extend my stay beyond six months and planned a trip to the consulate in Edinburgh to investigate the procedure.

  Whatever might have become of my plans to stay in Port Scarnose beyond Christmas and into the following year, however, were suddenly preempted during the last week of October when Gwendolyn suffered a sudden relapse.

  I was frightened nearly out of my wits with a sudden banging on my door in the middle of the night. My first instinct was to call for help. Then I remembered I had no phone. As I was throwing on some clothes, the banging continued. I thought about crawling out a window at the back of the house and making a run for it. Instead I crept into the kitchen without turning on a light to see what I could see.

  With relief I heard a familiar voice from the front porch.

  “Marie… Marie, wake up. It’s Iain!”

  I flipped on the light and rushed to the door. There stood Iain, a look of urgency on his face.

  “Marie, get on your shoes and a coat—you have to come withme.”

  “What is—”

  “It’s Gwendolyn. She’s not doing well. They want you at the castle.”

  I ran outside three minutes later. We hurried to Iain’s car.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “About two-thirty,” replied Iain. “Alasdair telephoned me and asked me to wake you and for both of us to come.”

  “The poor girl! She has had to face so much in her young life.”

  When we arrived at the castle, Alasdair was obviously agitated. The doctor was in Gwendolyn’s room. We talked for a few minutes in the adjacent sitting room, Alasdair filling us in on what had happened.

  “She got up to go to the toilet,” he said, “and collapsed on her way back to bed. Her legs simply gave out. I heard the fall and immediately went to her. Even when I helped her up, she couldn’t stand. Her muscles are gradually losing their strength and will eventually atrophy from disuse.”

  “Alasdair,” said Iain, “we need to tell Olivia.”

  Alasdair nodded. “I hate to ask, but—”

  “Don’t even think it, my friend,” said Iain. “I will be happy to go see her. What is your sense of the thing? Should I go now? Wake her in the middle of the night?”

  “Dr. Mair does not think anything more serious will happen immediately, certainly not before morning. It can wait until then. But I can tell from his face that he is not optimistic. I don’t know if Olivia will come, however, knowing that the three of us are here.”

  “I will do what I can at first light,” said Iain. “A minister’s job is not to preach clever sermons but to bring about healing in God’s family. If I cannot do so with a member who also is an elder in the church like Olivia, perhaps I ought to seek a new line of work.”

  “I appreciate it, Iain,” said Alasdair. “Assure her that she will be entirely welcome. No, more than that. Assure her that I want her to come, and that she is part of the family.”

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Angel Harp

  Sae dear’s that joy was bought, John, sae free the battle fought, John.

  That sinfu’ man e’er brought to the land o’ the leal.

  Oh, dry your glist’nin e’e, John, my saul langs to be free, John,

  And angels beckon me to the land o’ the leal.

  —“The Land o’ the Leal”

  After further consultation with the doctor, Alasdair chose to leave Gwendolyn at the castle. Dr. Mair said there was nothing that could be done for her at the hospital, even at any of the large hospitals in London. She would be better off where she was happy and comfortable.

  Love was the only healing power for her now. What medical science could not do for her body, love would have to do for her spirit.

  And never had a thirteen-year-old girl been loved the way little Gwendolyn was loved by her devoted father!

  Alasdair had a guest room prepared for me, the room next to Gwendolyn’s. He asked me if I would stay at the castle for a while, hopefully until she recovered. If not, for as long as it took.

  Mrs. Urquhart was as kind to her niece and as helpful as any of us. She acknowledged Alasdair’s invitation through Iain and spent most of that first day at the castle. After two more days, Alasdair persuaded her to take one of the guest rooms down the hall from mine for as long as she liked, and to treat the castle of her childhood as her own. He was more gracious than I would have thought possible. His kindness gradually succeeded in softening her a little.

  But only a little. She would not speak to me.

  It made matters more difficult since we were both attending to Gwendolyn. She still looked upon me as an intruder, especially since my room was next to Gwendolyn’s and I was usually the first one Gwendolyn asked for whenever she awoke. When Mrs. Urquhart came, I offered to leave, but Alasdair wouldn’t hear of it. We managed by sort of unspoken consent to alternate our times with Gwendolyn.

  I played my harp for two or three hours every day at Gwendolyn’s bedside. It began to seem that her own playing might be at an end. One day Alasdair and I managed to get her out of bed and seated on a chair in front of the harp. Even that proved too fatiguing. After a short time, she asked if she could go back to bed.

  So I played for her and often played tapes of her own music, which she seemed to enjoy in a mystical way, and sometimes read to her.

  Mostly it was Alasdair at her bedside, even when she slept.

  I knew this was breaking his heart. But he bore up stoically. I saw from his red eyes that when alone he often wept. When he was with his daughter, however, he revealed nothing but smiles and cheery words of encouragement.

  “I know you didn’t like it when I asked you before, Marie,” Gwendolyn asked one day when I was alone with her in her room, “but may I please call you Mummy?”

  “But, dear Gwendolyn, I’m not your mummy,” I said.

  “My mummy’s dead. I want to call someone besides Auntie Mummy again, and to feel her arms around me.”

  Silent tears gushed from my eyes. I bent down to her bed and scooped her into my embrace and held her tight.

  “Yes, you can call me Mummy,” I said. “I will be your mummy for just a little while.”

  “Until I see my own mummy again,” she said. “I think I will
see her before very long. I can hear her speaking to me sometimes, or almost. I think it is her. Maybe it is an angel, I don’t know. But I know I have to wait and be patient a little while longer before she will come for me.”

  It was all I could do to keep from sobbing. I was glad Mrs. Urquhart hadn’t heard the exchange.

  A few more days went by. Dr. Mair came and went. All he did was check her pulse and blood pressure and occasionally take a pinprick of blood to test. We all knew he was just going through the motions, probably more for our sake, to make it seem that something was being done, than for anything to be gained by it.

  Then came a day when he and Alasdair closed the door of Alasdair’s study behind them. They were alone for ten or fifteen minutes. When they emerged, Alasdair’s face was pale.

  After that, he almost never left Gwendolyn’s room.

  The next day, about midafternoon, I heard Alasdair’s step coming from Gwendolyn’s room. He poked his face through the open door of mine.

  “Come,” he said, then turned and disappeared.

  I hurried after him. Mrs. Urquhart had gone home for the day.

  I entered Gwendolyn’s room. Alasdair sat on the side of the bed, one of Gwendolyn’s hands in his.

  “Here is Marie, Gwendolyn, dear,” said Alasdair.

  “Will you play for me on the angel harp?” said Gwendolyn. Her voice was so soft I could barely hear it.

  “Of course, sweetheart,” I replied.

  I began playing the song that had been inspired by the very firstsounds to come out of her on my harp, which I called “Gwendolyn’s Song.” How many of the notes were Gwendolyn’s and which ones were mine, I no longer had any idea. I played as softly as I could, though the sound seemed to fill the room. The moment Gwendolyn heard the familiar melody, she leaned her head back on the pillow, a smile of peace on her lips.

  “One of the angels told me she heard you when you were playing once in the church,” she said in a voice so soft I barely was able to make it out. “She said she wants me to play for her, too.”

  I continued to play for several minutes.

  Gradually the tiniest sound came from the bed. My fingers stilled and I listened. She was gazing up out of the pillow into Alasdair’s face. Gwendolyn was singing, “A baby came to Mummy and Daddy. I had just begun to be…”

  She stopped to take a breath. Her voice was so faint.

  “Mummy and Daddy,” she tried to go on. “Mummy and Daddy… loved baby. That baby… was me.”

  The tiny voice fell silent.

  I stood and went to Alasdair’s side. As I glanced down upon the bed, Gwendolyn’s eyes were closed. The light had faded from her face, though the remnant of a smile lingered on her lips. I knew she was gone.

  She had taken her music to share it with the angels.

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Remembering

  We silently stray ’mong the tombstones,

  And muse on our friends who are dead,

  But alas! Here are only the dry bones—

  The souls of the dear ones are fled.

  The timid, the bold, the young, and the old

  Together lie peacefully here,

  And it now matters nought what a cold world thought

  Of loved ones we held so dear.

  —“Wee Jamie”

  The events of the past months had so captivated the entire community, Gwendolyn’s sudden death was the only thing anyone could talk about.

  The sympathetic among them perceived it in terms of the tragic figure of Duke Alasdair Reidhaven, reunited with his daughter after many years, only to lose her so quickly. The more cynical among them tried to revive dark intimations out of the past with speculations that more was involved than mere illness.

  Tales of the family curse and the second sight resurfaced, and worse. While there had been talk of a change in the duke, not many of the villagers had seen it with their own eyes. Many of the small-minded were willing, therefore, if not eager, to believe whatever sinister tales they might hear. But there were enough who had seen him with me or Iain to attest to what unmistakably appeared to be a different spirit about him, a spirit of light not darkness. These were mostly able to counteract the influence of the evil rumors.

  Even Olivia Urquhart, as much as her natural inclination was to cast suspicion by subtlety and innuendo, could not credibly imply that her niece’s death was from other than natural, if tragic, causes.

  The outdoor service, presided over by Iain Barclay at the Deskmill Parish Church, was attended by more people even than had come to witness the sailing of the duke’s yacht.

  Alasdair arranged a traditional funeral as might have been given one of the laird’s family a hundred years before. Accordingly, the little casket bearing Gwendolyn’s body was loaded into a black-draped horse-drawn hearse at Buchan Castle, myself and Iain and Gwendolyn’s two living relatives in attendance. The hearse then began the long procession of two miles into town and in a wide circle to the church, arriving at length on the other side of the high stone fence from where it had begun its solemn journey.

  As we walked behind the little girl who had brought us together, Alasdair and his sister leading, Iain and I behind them, we were silently joined along the way. As the hearse passed through the village, no sound was to be heard but the steady clomp-clomp of the single horse along the middle of the paved streets. Gradually the processional gathered hundreds behind us, until we arrived at the church more than four hundred strong.

  The groom drew the great draught horse in.

  The four of us together, for the coffin was not a heavy one, lifted little Gwendolyn from the back of the open hearse and carried her to the small plot adjacent to the churchyard cemetery where those of the duke’s family from centuries past had been laid to rest. The very sight of Iain Barclay and Alasdair Reidhaven together again was enough to set what might have remained of the rumors to rest.

  With Alasdair, Olivia Urquhart, and myself standing beside the coffin, Iain took his place on the opposite side facing us. He invited the onlookers to come closer and gather round.

  “We are here to celebrate the life of Gwendolyn Reidhaven,” he began after the movement and shuffling had subsided. “It was a life, to our earthly sensibilities, far too short, brought abruptly to an end by a tragic illness none of us understand. We cannot fathom why death strikes one such as this at such a tender age. But we believe in faith that in God’s eyes things are different than they appear. We believe that the measure of a life’s significance is not revealed by longevity but by impact in the kingdom of heaven. Some of the world’s most selfish misers live to be ninety. Yet our Savior never saw his thirty-fourth earthly birthday. Quantity of years has never been God’s standard of reckoning.

  “Therefore, as we consider the life of Gwendolyn Reidhaven…”

  As I listened, I realized that it was almost unnecessary for Iain to say anything. The fact that we were all standing there together said all there was to say. Gwendolyn’s short life had brought healing and reconciliation to this entire community. It was true that Alasdair and Mrs. Urquhart were still estranged. But the healing that had begun between Alasdair and Gwendolyn, father and daughter, and had spread to Alasdair and Iain, had in a short time spread throughout the entire community.

  A new spirit was alive everywhere, a new optimism, a new sense of community and brotherhood and camaraderie. The tears being shed that day—I was crying as Iain spoke, as was Olivia Urquhart beside me, and as were many women of Port Scarnose who realized they had not been as kind to poor little Gwendolyn as they might have been—were like warm, gentle rains coming down from heaven to water new flowers of healing that Gwendolyn’s short life had planted.

  Hovering over us all, I saw Gwendolyn’s bright red hair and white face, now smiling and radiant and alive and happy, free at last from the afflictions of her earthly life, and saying to all who were able to perceive her words in their spirits: Do not grieve for me. I live, I rejoice, I love. I am singin
g and playing my own special harp with the angels! Be happy for me, and be one with each other!

  My attention was drawn back to Iain as I heard him begin his concluding remarks.

  “And now, my friends,” he said, “please give the duke and Mrs. Urquhart and Gwendolyn’s Canadian friend the honor of retreating a short distance in silence while they pay their final respects to this child of God whom they loved and will continue to love. They will then be borne back to the castle in the carriage which brought little Gwendolyn from the place of her birth to her final resting place. At that time, if you so desire, you may come forward with your own thoughts and prayers.”

  I could almost hear Gwendolyn’s haunting voice singing her own lullaby to Alasdair.

  A baby came to Mummy and Daddy.

  I do not remember—I had just begun to be.

  Mummy and Daddy loved baby.

  That baby was me.

  The reminder brought fresh tears to my eyes.

  “Mr. Reidhaven has asked that I convey to you,” Iain went on, “his wish that you will afterward join him along with his sister and friends at Castle Buchan for an afternoon of joyful celebration for the spirit of reconciliation symbolized by his daughter’s life. He is desirous of rekindling many old friendships of the past—friendships he regrets having too long forgotten. It is his earnest wish that you will all come and share this day, both its sadness of loss and its joy of healing, with him.”

  Iain stopped and retreated a short distance from the coffin. He motioned for Alasdair to come forward. As he did, with a quiet shuffling of steps, the villagers stepped back. Alasdair stood beside the ornate wooden casket for a minute, his hand lying upon it. He then walked around it, glanced up at Iain and nodded, and took his place beside him.