The Treasure of Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  “And carry on the legacy of your father with your budding political and philosophical notions of blending protest with tradition?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Waiting for the chance to change the world in your own way?”

  Suzanne laughed.

  “Do I get first peek at the manuscript—exclusive serialization rights for my magazine?”

  “When it’s ready, you’re the first one I’ll call. But I know you didn’t come all this way to hear me recount my odysseys of the past ten years.”

  Hilary exhaled a deep sigh. At first she had wanted to talk to Suzanne. At this particular crossroads in her life, she needed the reassuring presence of one who was simply a friend. However, now she wasn’t sure they would be able to talk about the things concerning her most without ending up on opposite sides of what was for each an emotionally charged issue.

  “It looks as if it’s going to rain any minute,” she said, as if to steer away from a conversation that had not even begun. “I’ve got to catch the 5:15 back to London.”

  “I’m surprised you are here at all,” said Suzanne. “Didn’t you say tomorrow was your deadline?”

  “They can get along without me for a few hours.”

  Suzanne stopped short and stared with raised eyebrows.

  “What’s wrong with that?” asked Hilary, defensiveness creeping into her tone.

  “It doesn’t sound like you.”

  They continued walking. “Don’t worry about the train,” said Suzanne. “I’ll drive you back.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “Thanks. A drive through the South Downs is just what I need.”

  An hour later they passed through the sleepy little village of Arundel and headed north. The drive was unusually quiet. As the silence lingered, there came with it the sense that it was covering up things that needed saying. Suzanne finally ventured to breach it.

  “What’s troubling you, Hilly?”

  “Nothing,” replied Hilary, a little too quickly. She knew her answer was too frayed to be sincere. She studied the rolling green countryside out her window for a moment, then sighed.

  “It’s the same old thing,” she said. “You know how we have always fought our country’s system of peerage. Well, suddenly it’s much more personal to me. The question of the nobility’s place in our society is no longer one I can examine from a distance.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I can’t tell you—not just now, at least. Maybe it’s time for my season of re-evaluation—just like you. But I need more time to sort it all out.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “For me it is.”

  “You can’t have come fifty miles out from town to not talk about it.”

  “Well . . . I thought I wanted to talk, but I don’t anymore.” She paused, then added, “I’m sorry. There’ve been some things on my mind. But it’s too complicated . . . and I’m not sure what you’ll say now . . . now that you’re looking at it from the other side of the fence, so to speak. I know I’m being silly and illogical. I think I just needed to get away from the office, to have a friend beside me.”

  Again silence descended upon them as the little blue Volkswagen sped its way through the rolling hills and tiny woods which broke up the otherwise open landscape of Sussex. The rain had begun in earnest, and the only sound was the rhythmic thump and swish of the car’s windshield wipers.

  “Why can’t life be simpler, Suzanne?” said Hilary after about five minutes.

  “Sometimes it is,” she replied, “but the problem is we don’t often know what kind of simplicity we want, or need.”

  “The philosopher again,” laughed Hilary.

  “Sorry.”

  “I envy my parents,” Hilary went on. “My mother always knew just how her life would be. She spent her youth learning to cook and sew and clean, in preparation for the day she would marry and have children. That was the focus of her whole life—marriage and raising a family. She had no other dreams or expectations. Simple.”

  “Are you trying to tell me, my dear girl, in your roundabout way, that you’re thinking of marriage? Is there a new man in your life, Hilly?”

  “No,” replied Hilary. “It’s just that . . . I’ve found myself thinking about my own future—not because of a man, but . . . well, what would happen if I met someone, say, who was a nobleman. What if, all of a sudden, I found myself on the other side of the fence.”

  “Is it really so cut and dried, Hilly? I mean, is the division really so sharp?”

  “That’s what we’ve been preaching all our lives.”

  “My father’s death has changed my outlook. I spent most of my life rebelling against everything he stood for. Why the dear old man didn’t disown me, I’ll never know. I deserved it. But he didn’t. And now I find that everything that was his is now mine. All these changes have helped me see that he was who he was regardless of his position or title. A lord or an earl in front of one’s name doesn’t change intrinsically who a man is, nor does a lady. I thought I’d die the first time someone called me Lady Heywood after my father died. But then all at once one day I realized it was the same me. It was only a word, after all.”

  “So you have no conflict with being a lady?”

  “I never trouble myself about it. It never enters my head that I am Lady Heywood. I am who I am, that’s all.”

  “I could never be content as Lady anybody,” said Hilary. “My readers trust me to be who I am. I represent something to them. They count on me to speak for the middle classes, for the working people. And whatever readers I have of the so-called elite, they also expect me to address issues that matter in this day and age. To change that, to put a Lady Hilary So-and-So on my byline, would be a sell-out.”

  “Why all the fuss? Aren’t you making much ado about nothing? Or is there a man, but you just can’t tell me about him? Is that what all this uncertainty is about?”

  “No, honestly, it’s not a man. Let’s just call it an intellectual debate I’m having with myself over the state of our society, and my position in it.”

  She paused and Suzanne seemed content to let the silence linger. Hilary knew her friend didn’t buy her intellectual-debate excuse.

  “Why can’t people just be themselves, and nothing more?” said Hilary at length, almost as if to herself. “Why couldn’t you be just Suzanne Heywood, without the title, without the Lady, without . . . all it represents?”

  “But that’s what I’ve been telling you—I am just myself, and nothing more.”

  “No, Suzanne, there is a difference. I know maybe you don’t give much weight to your title. But there are still too many out there who do. I don’t care if this is 1971 and some people like you say such things don’t matter anymore—they do. There is still segregation in British society, and the line falls right between you and me.”

  Suzanne chose not to reply further. She knew their friendship was not at stake, and that Hilary’s questioning was about something other than that.

  Hilary exhaled deeply. “Why do things have to change?” she sighed.

  Suzanne’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “I thought your goal in life was to change the world.”

  “The world, yes. Me—no.” Hilary hesitated. “I’m not making much sense. Nothing seems to make sense these days.”

  “Now you’re the one running over with philosophical quandaries. But something tells me all you want to do today is pose the questions, not analyze the answers.”

  “I don’t know. You’re probably right. I’ve always been so sure of who I am, what I want out of life. Now everything is muddled. Am I supposed to be a wife or a worker or an aristocrat? Am I supposed to be Hilary Edwards, journalist, daughter of working parents, or . . . something else?” She spoke in a halting voice, then went on after a moment. “How can I be true to my readers when I don’t even know what my byline really means? Who I am is important to me, but I don’t even know who that is. My
mother—” Her voice finally broke and she hid her face in her hands.

  “God help me! I don’t even know what that means anymore. I don’t know—”

  She stopped, unable to continue.

  Neither spoke for some time.

  At last Suzanne said simply, “I’m ready to listen, if it will help.”

  “I’m not sure I can talk about it yet. It’s . . . just too sudden . . . I have to come to terms with it first myself.”

  “You’re not having trouble with your mother, are you?”

  An odd look of irony crossed Hilary’s face. “If only it were that easy,” she said, then fell silent and looked away out the window.

  “Well, are you going to make the deadline with that article you were telling me about?” asked Suzanne, trying to lighten the air.

  “I don’t think I’ll even try,” replied Hilary. “It will have to wait till next issue.” Her lips twisted into an attempt at a smile. “This looks like a perfect evening shaping up for a fire, a pot of tea, and curling up with Lady Hargreave. Tonight I’m going to ignore my typewriter . . . and my thoughts!”

  “You’re still reading that stuff? What will your professional colleagues think?”

  “Sherlock Holmes is now regarded in some circles almost as literature. And Lady Hargreave is every bit as intellectually stimulating. Besides, none of my colleagues are aware of my penchant for murder mysteries.”

  “I’ve never read one myself, but they’re all the rage down in Brighton.”

  “You and I should do so well with our writing! You really ought to try one, though I suppose a Lady Hargreave mystery hardly fits in with your new avant-garde intellectualism.”

  Suzanne laughed.

  Hilary gazed out at the lush green countryside. The rhythm of the car speeding along the two-lane highway was all too reminiscent of her long train journey of only a week before. If it was not then that her troubles began, that earlier trip had certainly intensified them. She had indeed spoken truly when she said that unexpected change had come upon her, for her world was suddenly upside-down.

  Hilary continued to stare blankly out the window at the fields and cottages passing by. Then she drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.

  If only she could see what lay beyond the horizon, around the next bend in the road, in the future where she did not know if she dared to go!

  4

  A New Era

  The tiny dead buds had long since turned brown and begun to fall from the wiry stems which held them. Only a short time earlier these same buds had been the glory of Scotland, crowning its barren hillsides, its mountains, its desolate moors with a majestic robe of royalty. But now, portending the approach of winter, a season which came with unusual fierceness to this rugged northern land, the heather’s purple had faded, leaving but tiny husks of death as a memory.

  Even on a day when the sun chose to reign over the land in the splendor and warmth of autumn’s grandeur, the dying heather spread over the hillsides a solemn coat of unsightly brown. But on a day such as this, when the sun was hidden by an impenetrable blanket of gray stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions, the landscape took on a hopeless complexion of despair.

  In the distance, ascending to the crest of a grass-covered knoll, standing out like an island of color amidst the sea of gray-brown dying heather, two middle-aged women walked alone. Just as they reached the top of the small hillock, a chilly gust swept in off the sea, sending the light hair of the one and the dark black hair of the other streaming away from their heads as if to loose it to join the bitter north wind in heralding the end of autumn.

  Unconsciously, both women shivered and pulled their coats more tightly about them before starting down the other side. They were seeking a little-used but time-worn trail that would lead them farther away from the North Sea at their backs, inland away from their ancient family home, toward a desolate strip of useless ground. Forgotten now by all but the oldest of the region’s natives, the area was known as Braenock Ridge. It was not a pleasant day to stir up memories from the past. But they had put off this encounter, and at last there was no time left. By tomorrow at this time they would again be worlds apart. They had visited their mother’s grave one last time together, and now had to arrive at an understanding between them. Both women sensed it, though there were no ready words for the occasion. This was new ground for each. Neither had spoken since leaving the house.

  Allison picked at the shriveled sprig of heather in her hand, brushing away the dead fragments of blossom until nothing was left but a slender brown twig. The gray earth, the gray sky, and the dying heather seemed particularly suited to her mood. Her mother was gone, the land was dying, there was no sun, no warmth, no hope, and it seemed as if—after centuries of life—Stonewycke itself was about to breathe its last.

  Finally she spoke.

  “I’m afraid, May.”

  Her sister did not reply immediately. She knew her duty for the present was to provide a sensitive listening ear. This was primarily Allison’s struggle. May could best serve her by hearing her heart and by understanding her fears. There was no way Lady Margaret MacNeil Reynolds could fully share her elder sister’s burden. For tomorrow she would be on a plane back to Boston.

  “Everything was so different before Mother died,” Allison went on. “I knew someday she would be gone, but I never considered the implications. Really considered them, you know—what it would mean . . . to me.”

  “I understand, dear,” said May quietly.

  “Oh, May, what am I going to do? Mother’s been gone only a week, and already I feel voices from the past calling out to me, loading me with guilt for not measuring up to all the other fabled Stonewycke women. It’s ‘expected’ of me now to assume the mantle, to step into Mother’s shoes, just as she did when Lady Margaret died. But, May, I don’t know if I can occupy the role all of them did . . . or even if I want to. Times have changed. I’ve got a life of my own that’s not tied to this place. Logan and I are happy in London, and I don’t know if—” She stopped.

  They walked on. May placed a reassuring hand on Allison’s arm. “If it’s any consolation, I want you to know that I have no exalted expectations of you. To me you have always been a dear sister, the best sister a woman could wish for. I will love you no less, whatever you decide to do.”

  “Thank you, May,” said Allison, a tear forming in her eye. “You don’t know how much that means to me right now. With Mother and Dad gone, and with Ian off to Greece again and Logan called back to London, it really is just you and I. I’d never be able to endure this alone.”

  Margaret smiled. “But you realize I have to leave tomorrow?”

  “I know.”

  “There are things we have to discuss.”

  Allison sighed. “I know, May. And I know it rests with me.”

  “You are the eldest. And you are . . . here. Even London is closer to Stonewycke than either Greece or Boston. Of course Ian and I will support you as best we can, but ultimately—”

  “I know, dear May . . . I know. What happens now does have to be my decision. But the thought of leaving the old place desolate, or worse, of letting it out . . . or even selling it! It’s just too horrible to think about. Yet Logan and I . . . live in London.”

  “Have the two of you talked about it?”

  “Oh yes. But you know Logan—ever the optimist. He doesn’t see what the problem is. ‘Lots of people keep two houses up,’ he insists. ‘Besides,’ he says, ‘the life of a politician is never secure. You never know when they’ll vote you out and you’ll need to retreat back to the family farm.’”

  “Maybe he’s right.”

  “Logan will never be voted out. The people up here adore him.”

  “Times change.”

  “Perhaps. But our home has been in London for so long, I don’t know if we’d come back, anyway. Logan and I are city people now—Logan always has been.”

  “Has any of that changed for you, now that—well
, these last several months . . . I mean, now that the past has suddenly turned everything around again for you? Do these recent developments make you think of returning permanently to Scotland?”

  “I don’t know, May. I had been beginning to feel a security, a peace, as if we might be able to experience some of what we’ve missed. These last two months have been wonderful—riding again, and I’m learning to paint! Although I must admit the pace seems to be catching up with my years; I haven’t been feeling so awfully well lately. Content, but a bit weary.”

  “I thought you looked a little pale.”

  “Probably just the strain. Change, even positive change, can be stressful.”

  “Is there any chance she’d be able to keep the place up after you and Logan return to the city?”

  “I don’t want to apply pressure—especially not now, not after all we’ve been through.”

  “Why don’t we postpone a final decision for now, keep the staff on, make sure the castle and grounds are maintained? You and Logan can come up every several months and check on things, and we’ll see what happens. That will give you all the chance to see what you want to do now that things are so different.”

  “I suppose that’s the best option, but it sidesteps the real problem—for me, that is. The problem of how I’m supposed to respond to Mother’s passing.”

  May sighed. “I was trying to make it easier for you.”

  “It’s the legacy—that’s always been Stonewycke’s strength.”

  May nodded.

  “I don’t mean to sound like a feminist. And I’m not one either. But we all know that there is something special God has done through the women of Stonewycke.”

  “An anti-feminist? That hardly sounds like the Allison I remember from years ago.”

  “I didn’t say I was an anti-feminist, May. But I’ve learned some things about marriage—learned them the hard way. And I finally understand what I don’t think the women’s lib advocates do. Just because the Stonewycke legacy has come through the women doesn’t mean that we don’t need the men God has given us. Each of the noble, wonderful men in this family has played an essential role in the ongoing life of Stonewycke. Without them in their God-given roles, this family would not have maintained its strong and holy heritage.”