Stranger at Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  . . . Nine inches . . . eleven . . .

  Logan set the pipe into place. It was still a little crooked.

  “Another inch or two!” he shouted, hiding his fear.

  Carefully the men continued to increase the pressure. At last the opening was wide enough and Logan jammed the pipe securely in place.

  “Back off slightly!” called Logan. He removed himself from the hole as the men eased the tension on their bars, everyone holding his breath during the tense moments, waiting to see if the bar would hold. At that moment Logan found himself worried more about saving himself than about saving Alec and the boy.

  “It’s holding!” cried Jimmy.

  Alec needed to hear no more. Now it was his turn to spring into action.

  “Help me wi’ the boy!” he called out.

  Still closest to the opening, Logan peered into the blackness below. Gently, but with great haste, Alec lifted Harry into the breach where Logan took his outstretched arms and pulled him up to safety.

  “A rope!” called Logan out behind him, and in moments felt Alec tugging on the bottom of the line he had fed through. Several men joined him, holding the upper end of the line secure, while Alec pulled his bulky frame, not without some difficulty, through the narrow opening. Within three minutes more, he was standing safely on the ledge with the others. A great cheer went up. Alec greeted them with a smile and a wave of the hand, then turned back, picked up a length of wood, and with a great blow knocked the pipe loose. The rocks crashed firmly and permanently together.

  “We canna be havin’ anyone else gettin’ trapped in there!” he said.

  He turned back to face the small and happy crowd, but then swayed unsteadily. Abandoning the reluctance that had come upon her at the sight of him, Allison ran forward and threw her arms around him. “Daddy,” she said, “you’re hurt!”

  “Allison, lass,” Alec answered stroking his daughter’s hair. “I thought I was jist dreamin’ when I heard yer voice.”

  “No, Daddy. I was here, and I’m so happy you’re safe. Here, let me help you.”

  Logan stepped forward to lend some support to the brawny veterinarian, but he almost wished he had remained in the background when Alec turned his attention toward him.

  “Thank ye, Logan, fer what ye did there. It took a good bit o’ courage, an’ jist may ha’ saved my life!”

  The temporary glow and sense of satisfaction with having done a brave deed suddenly vanished. The words a good bit o’ courage resounded in his brain like a painful gong intended to humiliate him before the whole world. He had almost forgotten who he really was, and why he had come. So caught up in his happy ride with Allison and the struggle to free Alec and young Harry, he had temporarily blanked his true self out of his mind. But now, reminded so graphically of his deception by Alec’s thanks, he felt like throwing his hands over his ears. Those were the last words he wanted to hear, for he knew he deserved none of them.

  “There were others who did as much,” he answered.

  “Aye, an’ I’ll be thankin’ them, too. But ye’re a stranger an’ so it means even more comin’ from yersel’, riskin’ yer life fer a man ye hardly know. I’ll na be forgettin’.”

  The clamorous approach of the men who had been scrambling down from their perch on the rocks above relieved Logan of the necessity to make any further response.

  But his conscience was not relieved of the fact that Alec’s praise was both unmerited and unfounded. He was a liar and a con man, and, if his plan to make off with the family’s lost treasure succeeded, he would also be a thief. He deserved no praise.

  He was far from brave. And he knew it. Because he lacked the most fundamental courage of all—the courage simply to tell the truth.

  42

  New Dawn

  Sunshine spilled in through Allison’s window. At first she noticed nothing unusual about it. She rolled over in her bed, yawned and gave a great stretch, and then realized it was the first ray of sun she had seen in days.

  She sprang out of bed, ran to the window, and flung open the drapes. Yes! Spots of blue were piercing the gray covering overhead. Allison did not mind the rain. Indeed, in the last few days it had been friendly to her. But it had also wrought havoc in the valley and along the coast. And it was because of the storm that her father had been trapped in the cave.

  But it was just like Grandpa Dorey had said—God had turned a seeming tragedy to good. Her father would be in bed a day or two with his injuries, but he would be fine. And out of his accident a profound wonder had occurred. When Allison had looked upon her father after he had been delivered from his tomb, much of the superficiality of her former shell had fallen away. She suddenly saw clearly what was truly important. All those things in her father she had tried so hard to reject were in reality the very qualities in life which mattered. For so long she had shunned her family. Yet now she knew she would be lost without them. Her father, in all the commonness of his upbringing, his occupation, his clothes, and his unrefined speech, represented all that she had disdained. Yet none of them—especially her gentle and soft-spoken father—had ever done anything other than pour their love out to her.

  How could she have been so selfish . . . so blind?

  At this moment, however, she didn’t want to burden herself down with all the questions and the guilt which they produced. Instead, now was a time to shed the superficiality of the past, start over, and try to make it up to them as best she could.

  Hurriedly Allison dressed in her prettiest spring dress of pale pink. What did she care if she had to throw a white sweater over her shoulders to ward off the chill that continued to linger in the air? She felt like the earth must when the first tiny crocus pushes past the snow covering the stubborn spring sod, or like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon. She didn’t know what was coming or even what she wanted to happen next. All she sensed was that a new day in her life had come. The sun was shining, the old shell had fallen away, and anticipation fairly throbbed within her breast.

  She hastened from her room, down the hall, and around a corner toward her father’s recovery chamber. Whatever it was she had to do in order to make a new beginning, she knew it had to begin here. The door was closed, and as Allison stood there hesitating, wondering whether to knock or walk in, the door opened of its own accord and she stepped back. Dorey, moving with exaggerated quietness, appeared. He quickly put his finger to his lips when Allison began to speak. Then he stepped across the threshold and closed the door softly behind him.

  He placed his arm around Allison and led her down the corridor before speaking. “I stepped in to see when he wanted breakfast,” he said at length, “but he was sound asleep. Your mother said he had quite a restless night, so I thought it best to leave him be.”

  “I was hoping to see him,” said Allison, “but I know he needs his rest.”

  “If I know your father, he will be up soon. Then the battle will begin to convince him to remain in bed for another day or two.”

  Allison smiled. Her father had never been sick a day in his life. He was up at dawn every day and continually on the move from that moment, riding, or driving all over the district tending his four-legged patients. He did sleep, it was true, but on many nights he was interrupted at all hours by emergencies large and small. He might grumble a bit then, but to be forced to stay in bed was quite another matter. No, she was sure he would not take kindly to a day in bed. Such thoughts reminded Allison of the boundless love in his nature that more than equalled his energy, and his hearty laughter, and his capacity to make friends with everyone. She had not allowed herself to notice such qualities of his character before, qualities which made of him no common man indeed, but rather a great one. How much she had missed!

  “Oh, Grandpa Dorey, will he ever be able to forgive me?” she asked, as if her great-grandfather had been privy to all her thoughts.

  “What are you speaking of, lass?”

  “My father,” she answered. “I’ve been so cruel and
selfish to him, acting as if I were too good for him, when all along it was just the other way around. I wouldn’t blame him if he hated me.”

  “Ali, dear, your father doesn’t know how to hate. And I know that he has long since forgiven you for anything which may have required it. He is not a man to carry a sense of wrong. But it wouldn’t hurt for you to ask him to forgive you if you feel it is necessary. He could not respond any way but with the loving arms of true fatherhood. And perhaps you need to do it for the cleansing it will bring to you. Then all the hurts you have been carrying can be put behind you.”

  “It couldn’t be that easy.”

  “You can only ask to know for certain. I know your father, I think as well as I have known any man. But my telling you of his love for you can never take the place of your knowing that love for yourself—just as it is with our Father in heaven. That’s why you are right to go to him.”

  “And you think he’d not be angry with me?”

  “Oh, my dear, that’s the last thing he’d be! A man who has known great forgiveness usually has a greater capacity to forgive. Your father has felt the touch of God’s love in his own life. He’ll withhold nothing from you.”

  “Oh, Grandpa, I hope that’s true, because there are several others I must ask forgiveness from after him. I’ve been so foolish!” She stopped and looked up into his aged eyes of wisdom with the youthful eyes of entreaty.

  He hugged her to him, then said, “Come, dear. Let’s walk farther and talk.”

  They continued along the hall to the main staircase and then down, with Dorey leaning on Allison’s arm, exiting the house, and emerging into the crisp spring morning. The sky was a brilliant blue, with scarcely a cloud except for two or three billowy white clusters—clean and sharply defined. Dorey breathed deeply of the fresh, cold air.

  “Ah,” he sighed, “there’ll be new blossoms now. It is truly spring at last. How I love springtime! Lord, how I thank you for your seasons!”

  They made their way past the leafless, flowerless rose garden, then down the slope of the lawn toward the rear of the castle.

  “Tell me, my dear,” Dorey said as they continued to walk at a leisurely pace, “what has been happening with you?” His voice was casual, conversational, but a tingle of something akin to excitement coursed through his aged body. “Am I right in sensing that there is a springtime of new birth seeking to blossom within your heart as well as in the earth all about us?”

  “I don’t know, Grandpa,” she answered. “I don’t feel very much like my old self lately. But seeing Daddy in such danger yesterday magnified it. Suddenly I didn’t want to be that way anymore—how I have been for so long. Maybe I began to see myself as I truly was. And I found myself wanting to change.”

  She sighed, then went on. “But I don’t know if I can. I just don’t have the kind of nature that can be good and kind, like my mother or great-grandmother. I don’t think I ever will no matter how hard I try.”

  “Have you talked to the Lord about this, Ali?”

  “I don’t think He’d listen to me,” she answered. “I haven’t prayed to Him much lately, and haven’t been much of a Christian.”

  “Then, if you care to take the advice of an old man, it seems to me that you ought to deal with that before you go trying to do something as big as changing your nature. You see, Ali, it is God who changes natures. You’d not get very far on your own. Your mother, and my Maggie—they would never say they had good and kind natures either. They both had to come to this point in their lives when they laid down who they were on their own and began to let God remake them according to His design. That’s why it’s God you need to talk to first.”

  “But why would He listen to me—?”

  She stopped short, for she knew the question hardly needed an answer. “Yes, I know,” she said, more to herself than to Dorey, “He always listens. Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of—facing God after so long. Grandpa, I’m not even sure I really am a Christian!”

  By now they had come to a small courtyard. Dorey paused and pushed in the gate.

  “Let’s sit in here a moment,” he said, leading her into the enclosure. “Look,” he said, pointing. “There are new shoots on the oak tree. I shall be able to come out here next week to plant the annuals.” The carved marble bench under the tree was dry, and he motioned for her to sit next to him there.

  “May I ask you a question, Ali?” he said after a moment.

  She nodded.

  “You have a kind and loving father, do you not?” She nodded again, this time with more emphasis.

  “And if you went up to his room this moment to ask, you believe he would forgive you and love you completely, don’t you.”

  “It’s hard . . . But yes, I do believe it.”

  “Do you think your heavenly Father, who sacrificed His Son for us, would have less capacity to love and forgive?”

  “I wouldn’t blame Him,” she answered, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’ve been so awful! All my life I’ve wanted to be like mother, and like your Lady Margaret. All I ever see is how giving and kind they are. And everyone knows how much they have given their lives and the wealth of their heritage for the common people. Yet I’m nothing like that! I can’t possibly ever measure up to what they must expect me to be like. I’ve been cold and distant and arrogant. Oh, how I’ve prayed to be like them, Grandpa! But down deep inside there’s such a fear . . . that I . . . that I never will be. I feel like . . . like I’ve let the family down!”

  She hardly spilled out the words before a torrent of weeping assailed her. She hadn’t realized what pain her confession would bring until it was at last spoken.

  The sudden gush of tears and uncontrollable sobs did not surprise Dorey. He had seen the turmoil building for some time, and now, even as she wept, silently closed his eyes in thanksgiving to his Lord for bringing it at last to a head so the deep healing of her heart could begin.

  He drew her to him, and quietly stroked her head as it lay on his shoulder. She cried for several minutes, until the surface of Dorey’s jacket was quite damp. Then she lifted her head, sniffed, and dried her eyes on his offered handkerchief.

  “Oh, Grandpa, what am I going to do?”

  “Simply ask your heavenly Father to help you,” he answered. “He wants nothing more than to help His children.”

  “But . . . I don’t even know if I am His child . . .”

  “Then let’s take care of that first,” said the old man, taking her hand in his. “Come, dear, let’s pray. . . .”

  43

  The Prayers of the Righteous

  Ian and Maggie walked hand in hand up their favorite little knoll near the house. Their shoes were wet by the time they reached the top, and they were nearly out of breath. But it was always to this place they came when they had a special joy to share.

  Indeed, though the stillness surrounding them would hardly have indicated it, they each knew there were multitudes of angels rejoicing with them on this great day for the Duncan clan, when their dear child Allison had been welcomed into the fold of God.

  Lady Margaret both rejoiced and wept at the news. Part of her, however, was saddened as well at what had oppressed the girl for so long.

  “I knew she was troubled,” she told her husband, “by some of the things she saw in the rest of us. It was clear her resentments and shows of pride were coming from her own insecurity. If only I had been more sensitive, how much pain might have been avoided. The dear child!”

  “I won’t have you blame yourself,” Ian gently rebuked. “You did everything God gave you to do. You could hardly sacrifice what He wanted of you in order to shield another from a very necessary pain.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The Lord gave to you and Joanna the vision of what serving these people of Strathy means. To you fell the blessing of giving a portion of Stonewycke’s heritage back to them. Allison felt she was supposed to live up to that tradition. But she couldn’t. And therefore she turned t
hat very thing into a false sense of pride that God had to break. You could not have avoided it for her. Your legacy, in a sense, proved the tool in His hands to break through into Allison’s heart.”

  “All things do indeed work for good, don’t they, my dear husband?”

  “There are many things only He can do. And certainly one of those is knowing a person’s mind and heart, and then doing whatever is necessary to open that heart to His love. Only the Lord could identify that something in Allison—whether it was rebellion or fear or insecurity—made her feel so oppressed by the rest of us. Only God could identify that, and then reach in and heal it.”

  “Oh, Ian, I’m so glad she’s whole again! I remember how fresh and clean I felt when at last I released the terrible burden of unforgiveness toward my father. When at last I was able to give it up, even though I was not yet with you, I felt my spirit could soar!”

  “I’m glad for her, too. But it will not be easy for her. She is with her father right now on one of the difficult errands God has compelled her to do. You had to forgive your father; she has to ask her father’s forgiveness. And that can sometimes be even harder. I suspect she will want to see you and Joanna next. And that will not be easy for her either.”

  “But now she won’t be alone,” added Maggie, as if she were encouraging Allison herself. “With the Lord’s Spirit now inside her, she will have a strength to face such challenges she hasn’t had before.”