Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  Off he ran across the grass. His sister scampered after him as fast as her tiny but determined legs would carry her. Already she had forgotten the daisy. It dropped from her hand not far from where it had grown out of the grass to attract her notice.

  Gently Jocelyn Rutherford lowered herself to the warm, fragrant grass and watched the two as they raced off down the slope. The walk out from the Hall had taxed her, for she was six months along toward bearing her third child.

  Absently she picked up the forgotten daisy, then held it up and gazed a moment at the simple glory of its happy face.

  And I’m happy here, too, she thought to herself.

  Out here on the downs, there were no mirrors to mock her. Here, her eyes had only to gaze outward upon all that she had been given—the home behind her, the countryside she so loved, and her two treasured young ones. Here, she did not have to gaze inward nor to think about her face . . .

  But now, of course, she had thought about it. Almost of its own accord, her hand came up to trace the familiar outlines of the bright red birthmark that stretched from neck to forehead . . . the mark that for so many years had defined not merely what she looked like but who she was.

  But not here, she told herself, deliberately lowering her hand. Not here at Heathersleigh.

  Jocelyn especially loved the peaceful seclusion of her home. Knowing what her face looked like to acquaintances and passersby, how could she not feel out of place in the society of which her husband was a part? Charles was always such a great encouragement. But she knew how people were. Here at Heathersleigh she could be content, and not have to wonder what people were thinking.

  George and Amanda did not look at her strangely. In such young eyes their mother was just what she had always been. Out here Jocelyn could be happy that no one else’s eyes were upon her, not even her own.

  And Charles . . . for some reason she could never understand, her husband had always seen beyond her marred face and loved her for the woman she was. Even now she could not fully fathom the happy circumstances that had come to her life.

  A happy face, thought Jocelyn, looking down at the daisy again.

  She had all any woman could dream of—a husband who loved her, two dear children, another on the way—and even a home in a stately manor house. She was, after all, the wife of the new lord of the manor of Heathersleigh. With only a bit of imagination and will, she could convince herself to stop wondering when it all would end.

  Still clutching the smiling little flower, Jocelyn pushed herself up carefully from the hillside and set off after her children with an energetic and determined step. What was this newfound happiness in her life but an opportunity, a chance to redeem her pain and turn it into good?

  Here she could do what was the one thing she wanted most in life—to be the best wife, and the best mother, in all England.

  She would lavish upon her children what she had not had—affection and acceptance. If her own mother had been unable to love her, she could still turn the pain to good in the lives of George and Amanda and the new baby growing inside her. She would love them and accept them and pour herself into them with all the energy she possessed. Never would any of them have a single doubt that she loved them fully, exactly as they were.

  As George’s and Amanda’s happy shouts and cries receded into the distance, Jocelyn’s gaze followed them toward the village—the peaceful little cottages, the narrow streets, and the church with its steeple stretching so straight and high into the sky. Then, slowly, her eyes swept back over the warm summer’s landscape toward the Hall which was now her home.

  Unknown to Jocelyn Rutherford there was One who beheld her even now as she gazed out over the hills of her home. He it was who had given her the mark of love for which she would one day thank him. She would learn of that gratitude which lies at the root of all true joy. The lesson, however, would not come without change and pain. He is never content for us to be merely content. He desires that we be always becoming more. His will is that our contentment arise from gratitude rather than safe or pleasant circumstance. Toward such a true contentment he was already taking Jocelyn Rutherford, though she did not yet recognize that it was on such a pilgrimage she was bound.

  “I really am happy here,” she murmured as she watched her children play on the next hilltop. Here, she had been given a chance for love . . . and motherhood. Here, she had the opportunity to make her pain almost seem worthwhile by making sure her own children never had to suffer.

  Here at Heathersleigh Hall, she was at home. If she had her way, she would never leave this place as long as she lived.

  2

  A Father’s Vision

  The physical landscape of the county of Devon had not changed dramatically in the three hundred years since the mighty Spanish Armada dropped anchor off its rugged southwestern coast, intent on invading England.

  The vast Spanish empire of the sixteenth century had been at its height when the huge fleet of 130 proud warships, merchantmen, and transports first laid eyes on the rugged coast of Plymouth in the year 1588. There, in blustery seas, the Armada anchored in preparation for invasion.

  The entire island looked southwest to Devonshire . . . and trembled.

  What awaited the Spanish, however, was humiliation and defeat at the hands of Francis Drake and Charles Howard. After a century of world domination on the high seas in worlds old and new, the empire of Isabella, Cortés, and Philip II began a decline from which it would never recover.

  A new power was rising in the world in this sixteenth century—England.

  Given impetus by its triumph in the landmark sea battle, the influence of earth’s most strategic isle rose through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to dominate the future of Europe.

  And now as the nineteenth century drew to a close, mighty Britannia not only ruled the seas, but held influence over the entire globe. In politics, finance, industry, and ideas, the progressivism of England led the world toward a new century.

  It was a good and happy and proud time to be English, notwithstanding changes looming on the political scene and rumblings of many strange happenings on the Continent. Queen Victoria was still on the throne at the seasoned age of seventy-six. And when the new century dawned a mere five years from now, there was every reason to believe the coming years would continue bright with the promise of peace and prosperity for the citizens of the greatest kingdom on earth.

  Epitomizing this modern era of which she was a part, a young girl now walked hand in hand with her father along the main street of Milverscombe. By the light bounce of her step an observer would conclude she possessed no care in the world. Indeed, she looked like the leader of the two as she pulled her father energetically along with the same enthusiasm she had shown for the daisy with her mother the year before.

  Charles Rutherford, a well-proportioned and distinguished gentleman of thirty-eight years, was clearly pleased with his eldest daughter’s vigor and enthusiasm.

  Little Amanda was already thoughtful beyond her years because her father had taught her to be so. A thorough modern himself (though his title was ancient), his greatest joy was teaching his young son and daughters to think. He engaged them in constant dialogue. The subject mattered little. Whatever came into his head or one of theirs was fit grist for their strengthening intellectual mills, whose stones he had begun to harden and hone long before they could even talk.

  He never addressed them as children. He intelligently answered any question they thought to pose as if speaking to a mature man or woman. But such answers more often than not drove the questioning back upon them, probing yet more aspects of the matter at hand. He answered by raising points they had not considered, urging them to observe and ponder, to weigh and analyze, and to form their own conclusions. Always did he push them deeper into their own thoughts and minds, forcing them ever and again to face those basic queries so essential to mental curiosity and growth—Why are things as they are? How do things function?

  His
own perspectives mattered less at their ages than that they used their powers of logic and reason. He would let them develop each according to his or her personal bent. His chief goal was to give them the intellectual stimulation to do so, rather than force his own views upon them.

  “Do not accept what you cannot understand,” he was fond of saying. “Do not take what comes merely because such has it always been, or because by such traditions have people formerly been taught. Question everything.” At the same time he emphasized that they could do and be anything they chose. There were no limits to what man, or woman, might achieve.

  Such tenets defined the reformist creed he espoused. Those of like outlook, whose ranks were swelling to great numbers these days, took them as foundation stones of truth because they sounded so enlightened. These men and women were more products of their age, however, than authors of its modernism. In actuality, most knew less about truth than they realized.

  Charles Rutherford was an advocate of the new order in every sense of the term. The time had not yet arrived in his own life when he would send his probing mentality toward the sources of that modernism, and inquire into his own role in it. When it came he would do so with the same incisive scrutiny with which he now engaged the millstones of his liberal brain toward societal concerns.

  Then indeed would he confront truth. In anticipation of such an encounter, unknown to himself, others were already praying. But it would not come until his personal soil was ready for the reception of ideas which at this moment could not have been further from his consciousness.

  As a result of their interactive dialogue, seven-year-old George had become engrossed in the whys and hows of mechanical things. Young George shared his father’s passion to understand gadgets, devices, and the workings of the physical world around him. Father and son let pass no chance to observe locomotives and other engines, and they were tremendously excited by the steam, electric, and gasoline-powered motorcars that Charles saw from time to time on the streets of London. At home, they liked tinkering with machines in their workshop and attempting to build inventions of their own.

  His current companion, however, cared little for the engineering marvels of the day. Her fascination lay with society. Already motions stirred within her, encouraged by her father’s promptings, to rise high in that order and make her mark upon it. Not for some time, however, would she grow to recognize that society was composed of people with individual needs.

  Charles glanced down at his daughter with an admiring smile. What a time to be English, he thought. What a time to be a young woman, facing advantages as never before in history. It’s a wonderful age in which to live!

  A man approached. He was clearly of humble origins. His shirt and trowsers were soiled with the dirt of honest labor in his fields and among his sheep. Face and hands were rough and showed the weather.

  “Good day to ye, milord,” he said, placing hand to a cap as worn and dirty as his boots.

  “And to you, Mudgley,” replied the girl’s father, pausing a moment. He dropped her hand and held his own out to the man. “How are your sheep?” he asked. “About ready for the shearing, I would say.”

  “Next week, it is.”

  “I thought so—does it look to be a good yield?”

  “Middlin,’ sir.”

  “Will you be needing help? I’ve been attempting to perfect a mechanical apparatus to speed up the process without drawing so much blood. If you’re short I can send some of my men over for the day. It will give me a chance to try out my device.”

  “That’s good of you, sir,” replied the man with grateful and humble smile.

  As they spoke, Amanda watched silently. She beheld the two as if they symbolized opposite poles on the social spectrum, as indeed they did, and revolved the differences, to the extent that she was capable of, in her young mind.

  As the two continued on their way a few minutes later, Amanda twisted her nose and glanced back at the sheepherder.

  “He smelled bad, Papa,” she said.

  “The smell of honest labor is nothing to be ashamed of, Amanda,” her father replied, “nor something for others to despise.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “Men of the land like Mudgley are the true noble breed of our nation, Amanda. Without them, where would any of us be? We must always seek to do what we can for them.”

  Amanda glanced around again, then turned and fell in step beside her father. She still wasn’t convinced.

  3

  Of Tomatoes and the Future

  Heathersleigh Hall, the Devonshire mansion which Jocelyn and Charles Rutherford and their family called home, had been originally built in the mid-seventeenth century and added to numerous times in the intervening years. It had reached its present form during the occupancy of Charles’ grandfather, Lord Henry Rutherford, who had added extensively to the west wing. The impact of some of his lesser-known interior changes had long since been forgotten.

  And certainly there was little talk of building inside the mansion’s massive grey stone walls on this lovely June morning in 1897. Instead, voices could be heard in lively discussion around the breakfast table—and one voice in particular.

  The venerable queen of mighty Britannia who ruled the globe seemed a fit model for the determined young monarch of this home, who enforced her dominion with both energy and charm. That she had learned to exert herself yet more forcefully in the years since the incident of the daisy and the encounter with the sheepherder was clear enough.

  “I do not think I want the tomato today,” she announced.

  “It’s all right, dear,” placated her mother’s gentle voice. “You don’t have to eat it.”

  “In fact,” persisted the girl, “I don’t even want to see it. I want it taken away. I do not want it on my plate again.”

  The kitchen staff exchanged amused glances as they listened to the conversation from the breakfast room. Such exchanges were hardly new. The girl was one who knew what she wanted and usually got it.

  At the table, the young lady paused and smiled sweetly and irresistibly.

  “You know, Mother,” she added, “I think I just realized I hate tomatoes.”

  Jocelyn returned the smile.

  “The plates are all prepared the same in the kitchen, Amanda, with the whole breakfast,” she said. “But you can choose what you want to eat of it.”

  “But I don’t even want to see a tomato on my plate, Mother. There is no reason for it to be there day after day.”

  “That is the way the plates are always prepared, dear.”

  “Then it can change,” rejoined the girl. “Papa says I shouldn’t do things just because that is how they have been. Papa says we should demand change.”

  “On some mornings you may want the tomato. You ate everything off your plate just yesterday. Perhaps if we just left—”

  “That was yesterday,” interrupted the girl with perfectly pleasant countenance, though unmistakable tone, “but I do not want to see it there ever again.”

  Jocelyn glanced helplessly over toward her husband, while young George ate his breakfast as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

  Charles Rutherford looked at his wife with obvious amusement.

  “I’m afraid Amanda is right, Jocie,” he chuckled. “I have told her that very thing.”

  “Then you explain it to her,” laughed Jocelyn.

  “Quite right, Amanda,” the man now said, turning toward his daughter. “Do not accept anything simply because it is tradition. Think for yourself. Why does every plate in England have to display a tomato every morning? Is it a worthy tradition? We must challenge any practice that has become outdated and is no longer relevant for our times.—There, is that what you had in mind, Jocie?”

  “I’m not certain you conveyed what I was trying to say, Charles,” she laughed. “But I concede your point. Amanda is as free a thinker as her father!—Sarah,” she said, turning toward the kitchen.

  A maid appeare
d.

  “If you please, Sarah,” she said, “could we have a new plate for Amanda . . . without a tomato?”

  The maid complied cheerfully, and everyone was content, the parents no less than the daughter.

  Mother and father did not consider the exchange indicative of conflict. If their daughter did not want a tomato, who were they to insist otherwise? Self-rule was the order of the day. The family thus continued happily with their breakfast, none realizing the import of the seemingly trivial event.

  How insignificant do some matters appear at the time, yet how large later do they loom in the memory, when the perspective of years sharpens the lens of truth. It is not many in this world who are wise enough to heed what lies beyond the earth’s curve. If the sun is shining, it is enough . . . though perhaps it ought not to be.

  The Rutherfords were a family representative in many ways of the well-to-do of the times—affluent and enlightened. Similarly did the European family of nations look toward a new century in the midst of unprecedented comfort, prosperity, and self-contentment.

  Neither nations nor family, however, knew that much different times lay ahead than they envisioned. Out of sight behind the horizon, like a new and unseen Spanish Armada, storm clouds were already gathering. Little did the would-be heir of her father’s reformist ideas know what the new century would hold, or how the comfortable realm over which she now presided would one day be turned upside down.

  On this particular morning the father of the family Rutherford was even less inclined than usual toward anything that might disturb the harmony and pleasure of existence. Other things than tomatoes were on his mind throughout breakfast, for a great honor was about to come to him. On a day such as this, he would have given his daughter anything she asked.

  “Well, Jocie,” Charles finally said when the children had been excused and taken away by their nanny, “our big day is almost here.”

  “Your big day, don’t you mean?” replied his wife, taking a last sip of her tea.

  “You are part of it all with me, Jocelyn—you know that.”