Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  40

  A Lunch at the Cottage

  Amanda’s present mood, after what she had witnessed, was a grouchy one.

  She did not want to return home, yet as soon as she found herself on the edge of Milverscombe, with a few people about, she realized she did not want to see anybody there either. It was Saturday afternoon. The village school was out, and there would be too much activity to suit her irritable disposition. She had overheard her father mention the school to her mother recently, wondering if she and George were getting enough social education with their governess and tutor. The reminder made her all the less inclined to run into any of the village children on this day. She therefore turned toward the downs. She would take the northward path back home.

  It was midway through a spectacular month of May. The glories of an unfolding springtime were abroad in the land. A light rain had fallen the night before, showering the trees and cleaning them off for the day’s warm winds. Its remnants overspread the meadows and fields with ten million tiny droplets that the light would turn into radiant prisms of sparkling color. The rays of the sun now pierced them as invisible rainbow-making arrows, sending up from the blades of green a dazzling array of reds and golds and blues and yellows such as no diamonds around a woman’s neck could hope to produce. The odors emanating upward from the sun-warmed ground, and spread throughout the region on the wings of the morning’s breezes to gladden the hearts of men and women and turn their thoughts with thanksgiving toward their Creator, were the very fragrances of heaven itself to those nostrils who had learned to love the earth.

  As young Amanda walked carelessly uphill and down, however, her thoughts occupied, she noticed neither springtime’s glories nor earth’s bounties. She was in general perturbed at the world, and wishing she were riding Red Lady now instead of walking on her own two hot and tired feet.

  She went unseeing, an unfortunate thing to have to say about anyone, even one as young as she. Yet circumstances were already at work which would serve in time to open the very eyes now focused disinterestedly on the narrowing path in front of her.

  She had entered a sparsely wooded area about a mile from the village. Her present course would take her in roundabout fashion back toward the Hall. She was in fact not far from the location where she had earlier observed her father. His prayer-wood lay at the extremity of the Heathersleigh estate, loosely joined to a lightly forested range of moderate hills north and west of Milverscombe. Into the outlying precincts of these hills Amanda had now wandered. She knew where she was and was by no means lost, though in her preoccupation with nothing in particular she had forgotten that human abode was nearer than she had desired.

  “Good morning, Miss Amanda,” said a cheery and oddly distinctive high-pitched voice. “What brings you so far from home?”

  Amanda glanced toward the sound. Some thirty feet away among the trees stood Maggie McFee. A large basket of the twigs she had been gathering sat on the ground at her feet.

  “Walking home,” replied Amanda.

  “From the village?”

  Amanda nodded casually.

  “I had only just this minute finished with my load,” said Maggie, “and was thinking about lunch. How would you like to join me?”

  Amanda considered the prospect momentarily. She was still not anxious to return home, and despite the woman’s known peculiarities, Amanda liked her. After a moment she nodded her assent, even allowing the hint of a smile to curl the edges of her lips.

  “Good!” said the woman, “then come along.”

  Amanda turned off the path and followed her through the trees.

  “I’ll carry the basket for you,” said Amanda, a moment of brightness in her disposition, like yellow winter’s crocus, poking its head out of the ground toward the sunlight of the woman’s friendliness.

  “Thank you, dear!” replied the woman, stopping to set the basket down. “I’ll just gather another armload myself.”

  She proceeded to pick up another small bundle as Amanda lifted the basket, and soon they were walking off together toward the woman’s humble home.

  “Come, Bobby,” Maggie called out in the direction of the barn as she and Amanda emerged into a clearing at the edge of the wood and approached the cottage. “We’ve a guest for lunch!”

  Immediately her husband’s bald head popped out the top half of the rough-sawn double door.

  “Why ’tis the daughter o’ Master Charles!” he cried. “Welcome t’ ye, Miss Amanda!”

  The next instant the bottom half of the door swung open and he was striding forward to greet their guest. Already Amanda’s spirits had perked up considerably. For odd as the man looked, and strange as sometimes were the things he said, even temperamental young Amanda Rutherford loved Bobby McFee.

  He shook her hand enthusiastically, then returned briefly to the barn while Maggie led her into the cottage.

  “Sit down, Miss Amanda,” said Maggie as they walked inside.

  The girl willingly complied. The cool darkness felt good, for the day had grown warm as she had walked, and she was more than a little fatigued.

  Maggie began bustling about the small kitchen, and before many minutes had passed, a plate of thick-sliced dark brown bread appeared on the table. Another plate containing generous slabs of butter was set down beside it, followed by a cheese, a jug of cold milk, and all needful implements to consume the simple yet bountiful provision.

  Bobby came through the door just as Maggie joined their guest at the table. He sat down, and without a word to either of the other two immediately began to pray.

  “Our Lord,” he said, “all the earth’s bounty is yours, and we thank ye for providing this small measure from yer abundance, not merely t’ sustain and strengthen us t’ live the lives ye’ve called us t,’ but also that we might enjoy it. With grateful hearts we thank ye that life is a good thing when we let ye direct our paths through it. Thank ye for bringing young Miss Amanda’s steps across our path on this day, and may her life with ye be as rich as the one you have given us, yer humble servants. Amen.”

  Amanda scarcely heard the words. She had grown used to prayers at mealtimes, for her father and mother had adopted the same custom. It was a ritual, she assumed, which the whole world complied with as some sort of requirement prior to the partaking of food but from which she had been spared for the first seven years of her life. She never gave the content of such prayers much thought.

  “What brings ye out our way this fine morning?” asked Bobby McFee as he passed the bread and cheese to their guest and poured out three glasses of milk.

  “I was walking home from the village.”

  “On some errand for your mother, no doubt?” said Maggie.

  “No errand—only walking.”

  “We haven’t seen ye in many a day,” said Bobby. “And we haven’t really had much of a conversation in a month o’ Sundays. Now, I hear tell that ye’ve actually had words with the queen herself.”

  “I did!” replied Amanda brightly. “She was even older than you, Mr. McFee.”

  Bobby threw back his bald head and roared with delight. “Was she now? I don’t doubt it. The good lady Victoria’s been our queen many a long year. Did she speak t’ ye, lass?”

  Amanda nodded, her mouth at the moment too full of a bite of bread to reply.

  “What did she say t’ ye?”

  “That I would turn the world on its ear when I was older,” replied Amanda as best she could amidst the bread.

  “I see—and why did she say such a thing t’ ye?”

  “Because I told her I will be prime minister someday, just like my father is going to be.”

  This time poor Bobby McFee did not know whether to let his laughter out again or keep it in. He chose the latter, though the matter required extraordinary strength of will to accomplish. He nodded his head twice with a look of significance as if to say, “Ah ha . . . I see everything clearly now!” and left Amanda free to interpret the expression however she chose.
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  “So your father is going to be prime minister, is he?” now asked Maggie. “Did he say so himself?”

  Amanda shook her head.

  “I said it for him,” she answered.

  “And how is yer father?” asked McFee.

  Amanda shrugged, her expression suddenly changing.

  “He never talks about London anymore,” she said. “Or about Parliament or going to balls or being prime minister or anything!”

  “He’s a good and God-fearing man, yer father.”

  Amanda made no reply. Bobby’s words may have been true, but what was that to her? She liked her father better before God was around. The wise old Irishman saw that their guest was thinking more than she was saying.

  “Perhaps ye’re not agreeing with me, eh, lass?” he suggested in a happy yet probing tone.

  “Why should I? He was going to take me to London with him. He was going to take me to a ball when I was ten, and now everything is different,” said Amanda. “And I’m tired of them telling me what to do all the time,” she added, then closed her teeth around a large bite of bread and chewed it vigorously.

  “Ah—ye don’t think yer father ought t’ tell ye what t’ do?”

  “I’m old enough to do what I want.”

  “How old are ye now?”

  “Nine.”

  “Nine!” repeated Bobby expressively. “’Tis old indeed.”

  “Almost old enough to go to a ball! My father promised.” Her lip jutted. “But that was before.”

  “Before what, Miss Amanda?”

  “Before . . . before God.”

  There was a short silence around the table.

  “Well, then, what do you think about God?” asked Maggie at length.

  “I think everything was fine until Mum and Papa started talking about him all the time.”

  “What do they say about him?”

  “That they have to do what he tells them.”

  “Oughtn’t we do what God tells us?”

  Amanda half nodded, half shrugged.

  “What would ye do if he told ye t’ do something?” asked Bobby.

  “Oh, I’d probably do it,” answered Amanda without much conviction.

  “And you’ll do what God tells you when you’re older?” asked Maggie.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t like your own father and mother telling you what to do, Amanda dear,” the woman went on, “what are you going to think when you’re older and God tries to tell you what to do?”

  “Well—it’s different with God,” replied Amanda with confidence.

  “Is it different?”

  “If he ever told me to do something, I suppose maybe I would do it.”

  “But it bothers you that your parents try to do what he tells them?”

  Amanda did not answer. Although adept at using logical arguments to get her way with her parents, she was not really interested in having logic applied to her own attitudes.

  There was a brief silence.

  “They let me do what I wanted before he was involved in everything. That’s when everything changed. Now there are all sorts of new rules.”

  “Ah, so that’s it—God made your father and mother change, and they began treating you differently and making more rules . . . and you don’t like it?”

  “No I don’t.”

  “That’s what yer father’s there for,” now said Bobby, “t’ help teach ye t’ do what ye’re told, so that later ye’ll be able t’ do what God tells ye. How do ye expect t’ be able t’ do the one later if ye don’t do the other now?”

  “I don’t like anybody to tell me what to do,” said Amanda emphatically.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Amanda, squirming in her chair. “It doesn’t feel good.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it does. But, ye say,” Bobby asked, “—if God told ye t’ do something, then it would be different?”

  Amanda nodded.

  “Ye wouldn’t mind how that felt?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Amanda.

  “Why’s that?”

  “God’s never told me to do anything.”

  “Hasn’t he now, lass!” exclaimed Bobby. “Why that will come as some news t’ the old apostle Paul.”

  “Who’s that?” said Amanda, though she had heard his name often enough in the village church during the last two years.

  “Just the man who wrote some words in the Bible that were nothing more nor less than God speaking right t’ young folks like yerself.”

  Again Amanda shrugged, not so sure she wanted to hear more.

  “It was he who said Children, obey yer parents. So ye see, Amanda lass—God has told ye something t’ do. And ’tis something ye’re obliged t’ do cheerfully and happily.”

  Amanda sat silently chewing the last of her bread, thinking to herself that maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come here for lunch.

  A moment later Maggie rose and walked across the room. From the open desk portion of a curiously ornate oak secretary, Amanda saw her pick something up. She returned holding what to all appearances was a Bible of exceeding age. Its black leather cover was well worn and beginning to crack and peel. She handled it with reverence, yet did not let admiration for the age and cover prevent her from appropriating what was far more important, even had the rare edition been worth a thousand pounds, the truth of its contents.

  She sat down again at the table, opened the sacred book, and carefully turned through its thin, worn pages.

  “This is my mother’s Bible, Amanda,” she said, “and my grandmother’s before her. I was young when my grandmother died, probably not as old as you are now. But I can remember her telling me that if a body doesn’t begin early in life to see the mysteries of the kingdom, they become harder and harder to see as ye get older. ‘Margaret, my child,’ she would say, ‘a boy or girl’s got to get their feet moving along the right road as soon as they can. Developing the kind of inner sight that makes you able to see what the people of the world’re unable to see, that can’t be gotten in a day or a week or a year. The high things of God take a lifetime to learn. That’s why you must point your eyes toward them as early as you can. The Lord will take anybody, anytime, and will do his best with them. But whoever’s got the chance ought to get their eyes open early, so that the Almighty has time to let his mysteries get down deep into their character.’”

  The woman fell silent as she turned back several more pages.

  “This was one of her favorite passages,” she said after a moment.

  “Unto you is given,” she read, “to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are on the outside, all these things are said in parables.”

  Maggie paused again, then glanced across the table toward the girl.

  “Do you hear, Amanda?” she said. “—Mystery. That is what the Lord calls life in the kingdom of God. It takes a special kind of eyes to see into it. Your father and mother have discovered that mystery. Bobby called your father a good man, and he is. He’s always been kind to the people of the region. But now there’s something more to him that many don’t understand—just like it sounds to me that you yourself aren’t understanding it. It’s a mystery that’s waiting for you to discover, lass, just like he did.”

  Maggie looked down once more at the page in front of her and read further: “‘That seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand.’ Do you hear the words, Amanda dear? ’Tis just what you’re doing with your father—you’re seeing him, but you’re not understanding the mystery that’s in him.”

  “What mystery?”

  “The mystery of God, child. The old apostle said to young Timothy that great was the mystery of godliness. I’m thinking that same mystery’s alive in your father . . . and maybe God wants you to discover it.”

  Amanda was silent. She didn’t like getting preached at any more than she liked being told what to do. She heard enough of
this kind of thing at home, although her father didn’t talk about mysteries—in fact, she had no notion what all the nonsense about mysteries was about. Bobby and Maggie had never talked like this to her before, and she didn’t like it at all.

  “No one ever finds that mystery, lass,” said Bobby softly, “and lets it do its work of opening the eyes and ears, as long as the only person he wants t’ please is himself. That’s why ’tis important for young folks like yerself t’ learn t’ see the good, not the ill, in their fathers and mothers. ’Tis where learning t’ see the mystery o’ godliness starts. ’Tis why God tells young folk t’ obey and please them.”

  Amanda had finally had enough. She got up from the table and walked out of the cottage. She didn’t want to listen to any more of this.

  It fell silent around the table. The old couple sat awhile, both praying inwardly for the daughter of the man and woman they had done so much to bring into the family of faith.

  “Did we push the lass a bit far, Bobby?” said Maggie after a moment.

  Her husband sighed. “I don’t know, Maggie. We’ve been praying for her so long, and Master Charles and Lady Jocelyn have been praying, and I really thought she’d be ready t’ be led along a wee bit more. But it doesn’t seem that the humility o’ the father and mother’s yet found its way into the daughter.”

  “We must keep praying, just like Elijah under the juniper tree. The poor lass’s mind isn’t set on the high things yet. We must pray that the doors of her mind stay open enough for words of truth to get in.”

  Bobby rose slowly. “I’ll wander out t’ the barn. Perhaps she may yet be lingering nearby.”

  41

  A Conversation in the Barn

  Bobby McFee emerged into the sunlight, shielded his eyes with his hand, and glanced about. The girl was nowhere to be seen.

  He walked across the worn pathway and into the barn he had left twenty or thirty minutes earlier. Leaving the door opened, he resumed his work. Soon he was whacking away at a thick board with hammer and chisel.

  A form darkened the doorway.

  He glanced up. Amanda’s silhouette stood in the sunlight shining in from outside.