Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  Then Charles Rutherford had unexpectedly entered her life!

  It was not long after their engagement that the subject of children first came up between them. It was almost as great a surprise to Jocelyn as to Charles for her to realize she had no clearly defined notions of what sort of mother she wanted to be.

  But that changed soon enough. Once the idea of having children of her own—actually being a mother!—was a real possibility, Jocelyn knew that she desired nothing more than to instill good feelings within however many children she had.

  She would do for them what her own mother had been unable to do for her—enable them to walk with head high. Her own children would believe in themselves, believe that they possessed worth. She would give to her own children what she had never had—self-confidence and happiness.

  Now at last she had a son and two daughters, and the chance to do just that.

  George and Amanda and Catharine would never know the pain she had felt. Theirs would be a happy and contented childhood and youth!

  ————

  The course they followed rose steadily, though not sharply, toward a range of low-lying hills that could be seen from the windows of the Hall facing northward. From these hills in the opposite direction, on the clearest of days, hints of the Bristol Channel still farther to the north could be imagined.

  It was not a thickly forested region, yet between the open grassland and fields, it was covered with clumps of pine, fir, birch, and grand old maples, some oak and ash and hawthorn, under all of whose leaves and needles spread various grasses and wild shrubbery, some varieties of heather among it, from which the estate had doubtless drawn its name. When tramping through such woods, one might well imagine oneself in the midst of a dense forest. But just as suddenly could one emerge bathed in sunlight on the pleasantest of open grassy green vistas upon which sheep grazed as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

  It was altogether a delightful place for riding, although Charles and his family did not avail themselves of it as often as might be expected. The Heathersleigh stables contained some of the finest specimens of horseflesh for miles, and Hector Farnham knew and loved every one of his equine gentlemen and ladies as well as most mothers do their own children. Charles himself was absent from Heathersleigh much of the time, however, and Jocelyn had little taste for riding on her own.

  10

  Encounter With a Woodcutter

  As they went, and as the four horses gradually drew up even with one another, Charles chatted casually to his family as was his custom, explaining now how the windmill in the distance was able to operate machinery, now how the hair of the grazing sheep could be transformed into clothing, then posing some question or other for George and Amanda to consider.

  “There are so many changes coming,” he was saying as they entered a small wooded area. “It is an exciting time to be alive. Soon people will be riding everywhere in motorcars. Why, George, your children probably won’t even know how to ride a horse!”

  “There will always be horses, Papa,” said Amanda. “Nothing could replace them.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. What do you think, George—will there be machines one day to take people flying in the sky?”

  “You mean motorcars with wings?”

  “Exactly!” laughed Charles.

  “I cannot imagine people flying, Papa.”

  “Neither would our ancestors have been able to imagine railroads. I doubt there are limits to what man’s ingenuity can accomplish given enough time and experimentation.”

  A kind of pounding or whacking sound began to filter into their ears faintly through the woods.

  “What is that noise?” asked Amanda.

  “Let us investigate!” replied her father, urging his horse off at increased pace in the direction of the sound. “Who will be the first to discover the origin of this mystery?”

  Caught up immediately in the game, Amanda and George dashed after their father, passed him, and soon left him trailing their two steeds. He reined in Clydon until Jocelyn drew even with him.

  “You are always such fun,” she said. “What a father our children have! Everything with you is a game, a challenge, an opportunity, a mystery!”

  Charles threw back his head and roared.

  Five minutes later the parents emerged into a small clearing to see their children’s horses stopped beside a stocky and robust man whose axe had gone silent in a thick block of fir the moment George and Amanda appeared.

  The woodsman raised a friendly hand in greeting toward the couple on horseback. His head was as bald and shiny as a pig’s nose, though with occasional stray porcinelike bristly white strands extending out from random parts of it, most erratically around his ears. Yet although his mane had long since disappeared from above his forehead, his eyes shone from under thick white eyebrows with the sparkle of youthful enthusiasm.

  “Good afternoon to you, Bobby!” Charles called out as he rode up. “Getting a start on next winter’s wood early, I see.”

  “Aye, Master Charles,” replied the man in his thick brogue. The man had made no more attempt to rid his tongue of its Irish heritage than had his father who had come over to England fifty years before. Bobby’s use of an old-fashioned word or the turn of an odd phrase still revealed lingering reminders of his roots across the water to the west.

  “I’m not as young as I once was,” he added, wiping his forehead. I need an earlier start.—But excuse me, Lord Rutherford. I’m forgetting myself . . .”

  “Tomorrow you may call him Sir Charles,” said George proudly.

  “Call me anything you like,” laughed Charles. “I’m not sure anything but ‘Master Charles’ will ever sound quite right in my ears coming from you.”

  The woodcutter set down his axe, then reached up to give Charles his hand.

  “It was Mr. McFee chopping wood!” exclaimed Amanda. “That’s what we heard. Mr. McFee’s the mystery, Papa.”

  “So it would seem! How do you fancy being the object of a family search, Bobby?”

  “I’m always pleased t’ provide my betters entertainment with my presence in their woods, sir,” said the man with a twinkle in his eye.

  “I’m neither your better, nor, unless my sense of direction as we rode misleads me, are these my woods,” rejoined Charles.

  “Nonetheless, it’s much appreciative I am that ye allow me t’ cut here.”

  “The woods belong to the cottage as well as the Hall, Bobby,” replied the lord of the manor. “No one in my memory has quibbled over that. It may have all belonged to my grandfather or great-grandfather at some former time. But the cottage is yours now, and you’ve as much a right to the wood as myself. Besides, you and I’ve been friends too long even to discuss such things.”

  “You’re right, Master Charles, and I’m appreciative o’ yer friendship.”

  “Why don’t you have one of your servants cut the wood for you, Mr. McFee?” asked Amanda with precocious innocence.

  “Amanda,” began Jocelyn with embarrassment, “Mr. McFee—”

  But she was cut off by the rustic chopper of wood, who would rather Amanda hear the truth from his own lips.

  “I’m a poor man, Miss Amanda,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what t’ do with a servant if I had one. But even if I weren’t poor, I’d still be out splitting my own wood. For there’s nothing I quite enjoy so much as hard work in the fresh air on a bright day such as this.”

  Whether the significance of his reply could be grasped by the young mistress of Heathersleigh—who was as innocent of realities in some aspects of life as she was advanced of her years in her powers of persuasion and manipulation—was doubtful.

  “Well, we are out for a bit of a ride and had best be off,” said Charles. “—Come children, let’s leave Mr. McFee to his work.”

  “Give your wife our best, Bobby,” added Jocelyn.

  “She’ll ask me why I didn’t bring ye back for a visit,” replied the man.

  “Tell h
er we shall come over to the cottage one day before long.”

  “That we shall indeed,” added Charles. “I must see if my fingers still remember how to coax milk from your cow. It’s been quite a few years since I tried that.”

  “Too many t’ be sure,” rejoined Bobby McFee. “Ye’re always welcome.”

  Charles led off through the woods and the other three followed. The woodsman leaned on his axe and stared after them, remembering.

  ————

  He and Maggie had not seen Master Charles for two years, and that had been but a brief encounter. They had not had a visit and chat over tea for probably five or more. The aging man and wife knew he had changed. He could not forever remain the youngster they had been so fond of years earlier.

  But they were unprepared for just how different he looked when he came tramping through the wood and up the winding path toward the white-plastered and thatched-roof cottage and barn. Though merely nineteen, he had become a man—tall, handsome, articulate, and self-assured.

  “Well, Bobby,” he said approaching, “I’m off tomorrow to see the world on one of Her Majesty’s great ships. I wanted to come say good-bye.”

  McFee rose off his knees from the midst of the potato patch, brushed his hands two or three times across his trowsers, then offered it to the onetime frequent guest who was now taller than he.

  “We’re privileged that ye’d think o’ us on yer last day in Devon, Master Charles,” he said. “’Tis good o’ ye t’ come.—Maggie!” he cried. “Maggie, Master Charles is here!”

  She appeared from around the house a few seconds later, fairly skipping toward them with delight. A wide smile spread across the face around which patches of grey had begun to gather, though she was not yet fifty. She was not satisfied with a handshake, but threw her arms around the lanky lad.

  Charles laughed with delight. He still loved these two as much as ever, notwithstanding the infrequency of his visits in recent years.

  “Still the same dear Maggie!” he said.

  “I haven’t changed, Master Charles,” she exclaimed, standing back now and eying him up and down, “but you surely have. When did you get so tall?”

  “Last year I think,” he replied with a grin. “Right around my eighteenth birthday, as I recall. Suddenly I looked in the mirror . . . and there was a stranger staring back at me!”

  “Ah, well, you’re a fine-looking man now. Isn’t he, Bobby?”

  “Ay, that he is. He’ll be turning the head of every young woman in London afore long.”

  “Come in, come in, Master Charles,” said the woman, turning toward the cottage. “We’ll have tea once more before you go.” She led the way and the two men followed her inside.

  “Your garden is lovely, Maggie,” said Charles, glancing around as they went. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it so full of color.”

  “The Lord surprises me every year with new hues of his paintbrush,” replied Maggie.

  “No doubt your own hard work has something to do with it.”

  “Not so much as what the Lord put in the soil. His things will grow whether I am here or not. It’s God’s life that gives beauty to the world, Master Charles, not the work of man’s hands.”

  They reached the cottage, and walked into the cool, dim light. Maggie put water on to boil, while Charles and Bobby took chairs at the table.

  “Today’s scientists have a different explanation of why things grow,” said Charles, resuming the previous thread of the conversation. “They might say what you just did, but with a different conclusion—that the chemicals and particular arrangements of elements that nature has thrown together will grow things, with or without God.”

  “But they don’t recognize the source of life, so they know no better,” said Maggie from her place at the stove. “That’s just the nonsense of your university talking.”

  Charles could not help laughing, but good-naturedly.

  “You consider what the university teaches nonsense?” he said, still chuckling.

  “By no means—only the part of it that leaves God out, and says that life came about without him.”

  “What do you think, Bobby?” said Charles, turning to her husband. “Do you agree with your wife?”

  “I tell ye, Master Charles, if ever a body needed it proved t’ them that God was in his heaven, that he’d made the universe and everything in it, and that he’s the reason you and me’s got life within us, Maggie’s flower garden out there gives all the proof he’d need. That is, if such a one had eyes t’ see the proof that was right in front o’ him.”

  “Proof—what kind of proof?”

  “I mean no proof for the head, Master Charles, but rather the kind o’ proof God intended that only hearts could understand.”

  “Why would he intend such a thing?”

  “The Creator gave us our intellects t’ help in our journey. But he gave us our hearts t’ complete the job. In fact he made it so that the mind can’t get across the last barriers at all. The mind can only take ye so far. After that, ye got t’ rely on something else. ’Tis why only the humble o’ heart can see the proof o’ God’s truth that he put right in front o’ everyone’s noses.”

  Charles pondered his words a moment or two. Maggie took the opportunity to pour hot water into the teapot.

  “You’ll see what we’re talking about one day, Master Charles,” she said.

  “All men’s eyes are opened eventually,” added Bobby. “Though some take a little longer about it than others. Ye’ll remember the flowers. Then suddenly all the arguments o’ man, and all the human reasonings ye learned at the university, and all the science o’ this modern age—suddenly none o’ it will matter. Yer mind has taken ye as far as it can. Then ’twill be yer heart that’ll realize God is God.”

  Again Charles laughed.

  “Well, Bobby, we shall see!” he said. “Though it’s hard to imagine it happening. I’m a rationalist, Bobby. I believe in science, in progress. Not that I hold your beliefs against you. But they’re too outmoded for a young man like me.”

  “Yer day will come,” Bobby replied.

  “It comes to all,” added Maggie.

  “As I said, we shall see,” said Charles.

  The young man paused, laughed lightly, then added, “And the two of you shall be the first to know of it, when and if it does. You’ll always be friends to me, however much we may differ in our opinions of what orders the universe, faith or reason.”

  When Charles disappeared through the wood back toward Heathersleigh Hall some time later, Maggie and Bobby McFee glanced at one another. Then, as if in one accord, they knelt where they were, amid the glorious abundance of floral color surrounding them in Maggie’s garden, and lifted up their young friend to the Father they prayed he would one day acknowledge, and then desire to know more intimately.

  ————

  Bobby remembered the words, because he and his wife had prayed them many times in the years since.

  And now as he stared after the retreating riders, he uttered the simple prayer yet again:

  “Lord, open his eyes t’ yer truth. He’s got a good heart, Lord, and is a fine young man o’ noble character. Only one thing he’s missing—he doesn’t yet know his Father. Make him complete, Lord, so he can be a whole man. In yer time and in yer way, Lord God, reveal t’ him that place in his own being that his modernism and his science can’t explain . . . without looking up t’ you for the answer.”

  11

  A Family Discussion About Changing Times

  They had been riding for a while, after leaving behind the woodcutter Bobby McFee, when Charles asked:—

  “Once the wood is gone, George, what will people use for fuel?”

  “Some people use coal, Papa.”

  “What if there is no coal? What if the coal runs out like the wood—what then?”

  George thought a minute.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know—I know, Papa!” exclaimed Amanda.<
br />
  “What then, Amanda?”

  “They will burn something else.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know—something.”

  “Then you haven’t answered my question.”

  Again the only sound for a few moments was the clomp, clomp, clomp of the horses’ feet on the ground, broken by an occasional snort from one of their wet noses and thick fleshy lips, and accented every three or four seconds by the dull thudding sound through the trees behind them of axe striking wood.

  “What about electricity?” said Charles at length.

  “Can electricity make heat?” asked George.

  “People are experimenting with it. Why, by the time you are master of the Hall, George, my boy, there will doubtless be electric lights in every room. Candles will be as obsolete as horses!”

  “What is electricity, Papa?” asked Amanda.

  “Would you like to answer your sister, George?”

  “Current moving through wire,” said George.

  “Well done,” said Charles. “That expensive tutor I hired for you must be earning his pay. Now, what is current?”

  George did not answer immediately.

  “There are tiny bits of electric charge, Amanda,” said Charles, “called electrons. We have only just learned about them; Professor Thomson over at Cambridge discovered them. These electrons move through wire at the speed of light—”

  “I didn’t know light moved.”

  Her father laughed.

  “It moves so fast you can’t see it,” he said. “So does electricity.”

  “But I can see it. I see everything. Light does not move.”

  “You see everything because the light from the sun shines upon it and makes it visible. That light from the sun is moving faster than anything else in the whole universe.”

  “But it’s not moving, or else I would see it.”

  “You’ll have to take my word for it, Amanda, light moves. And it is that same kind of movement, within a wire, which causes electricity.”

  “How does that make light?”

  “If the wire is thin enough, and the electric current flows exactly in the right amount, the wire will glow. If you place a glowing wire inside a small vacuum bulb, then that glow will—”