Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  “Come in, Miss Amanda,” said Bobby. “I’m just needing an extra pair o’ hands t’ steady the end o’ my lumber there.”

  Amanda came forward slowly through the door into the darkened building. The sights and smells of the barn and straw and animals and leather settled her agitated mood.

  “Put your hands on the end o’ it there,” said Bobby. “Hold steady—”

  The next instant a loud whack sounded, and a great chip of wood flew out from under his blade and to the ground.

  “Perfect!” he exclaimed. “Thank ye, lass! Ye can relax now.”

  He eased the board back onto the center of his workbench, set down his hammer and chisel, and drew in a deep breath.

  “Do ye not love the smell o’ wood when a man’s cutting at it and making things o’ it?” he exclaimed.

  “I never thought about wood having much of a smell,” remarked Amanda, speaking now for the first time since leaving the table. Her tone was slightly peevish. Yet she was not inclined to bicker further.

  “Ah, lass—wood’s got the smell o’ the earth in it, the smell o’ growing things. And ’tis the smell the Master loved when he worked in his father’s carpentry shop. That makes it all the more holy a smell t’ this nose o’ mine. He was one who learned t’ do what his father wanted,” McFee went on as he turned and ambled toward the back of the barn where a lone cow chewed lazily about with its nose in a trough of hay.

  “That’s why he was Savior o’ the world, lass—because he did only what his Father in heaven wanted. He knew the mystery,” he said, then stopped to chuckle to himself. “What am I saying?” he added, still chuckling, “—he is the mystery! And he learned the mystery first, I’m thinking, right in his earthly father’s carpenter’s shop, from chipping and sawing and planing and pounding away at wood just like this.—But come, Flora here needs some oats.”

  McFee led Amanda across the hard-packed dirt floor to a bin where two large filled burlap sacks stood on end, one of them open at the top.

  “Here’s ye a bucket, lass,” said Bobby. “Fill it up and take Flora the rest o’ her dinner.”

  Amanda looked up at Bobby with an uncertain expression, as if he must have been joking.

  “Go on, lass—’tis perfectly safe.”

  Tentatively Amanda reached in and scooped handfuls of oats into the bucket. When it was full she carried it to the cow and dumped it into the trough alongside what was left of the hay. Flora’s large wet nostrils immediately sent bits of the grain flying about with warm puffs of breathy anticipation. Then her long tongue reached out in a great curling motion to investigate the oats.

  Amanda watched in fascination. At length curiosity overcame her. She sent out a hand with probing caution, and gently touched the rough wet thing with her finger. The next instant she drew it quickly back, laughing as she did.

  “She won’t hurt ye,” chuckled Bobby.

  “It felt funny!” giggled Amanda, the child-innocence surfacing from within her.

  “The tongue’s a curious device, all right,” said Bobby. “But all she wants is her oats.”

  Bobby took a step or two back. Amanda continued to stand watching the cow scoop the grain she had provided into its mouth.

  “What do you suppose Flora would do if I was t’ tie a rope about her neck and lead her outside t’ her pasture?” Bobby asked after a minute or two of silence. “Would she follow me out?”

  “Yes,” answered Amanda. She had seen McFee leading his cow in the fields more than once exactly as he described.

  “Would she mind it?”

  “No.”

  “Right ye are, lass. The animals don’t mind being told what t’ do. ’Tis because it’s the most natural thing in the world. And Flora’d be out in the field today if she wasn’t about t’ give birth to a new wee calf. So I kept her in, and she obeys that just as well as if I’d led her outside. Why do you suppose humans, o’ all the creatures, don’t want someone else telling them what t’ do?”

  “I don’t know. I only know I don’t like it.” The independent young woman suddenly replaced the child.

  “Of course ye don’t, lass. No one does. But there’s nothing else that life’s for than t’ learn that one thing—how not t’ do what ye yerself want. That’s all this earth’s for—t’ teach us t’ do what someone else wants.”

  “Who?”

  “Who else? God himself. He’s trying t’ teach us that from the day we open our eyes.”

  “How? He never taught me anything.”

  “Hasn’t he now!” said Bobby with an expression of grave astonishment.

  “No,” insisted Amanda.

  “He’d no doubt be a mite surprised if ye told him so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the way he teaches us t’ do what he wants is by our first learning t’ do what those people around us want us t’ do, those who are over us, our mothers and fathers first o’ all. That’s why Maggie and I said that doing what yer father and mother say is the best thing in all the world ye can do.”

  Amanda saw that she had been tricked. She promptly exited the barn without another word.

  42

  Paris in Spring

  A lovelier city than Paris in midspring could not be imagined.

  Up and down both sides of the great river Seine extended spectacular rows of blossoming ornamental cherry and other fruit trees. In the city’s multitudinous parks a profusion of color from millions of flowers spread a gay atmosphere into every heart to whom nature was capable of speaking its living secrets. Along the Champ de Mars, under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, built in 1889 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, tourists and lovers strolled happily amid the bright blossoms of God’s handiwork and the fragrant aroma of freshly mown grass.

  The secretive business being conducted over the table of a sidewalk cafe overlooking the Seine, however, had to do with neither flowers, nor monuments, nor love. The two had met here before, though the discussion now in progress concerned whether it would be prudent for them to do so again.

  “I cannot come to France or Italy twice a year indefinitely,” the one had just said, speaking in French so as to arouse no suspicion, but with an accent that would have curiously reminded an expert linguist of such distant outposts of Europe as London and Budapest. “This time it was especially difficult to get away by myself.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” replied the other, in a French not so cultivated, and containing only the eastern influence. “I will look for some alternate method to get the information to you.”

  “Are there reliable possibilities?”

  “We have many contacts throughout France and Italy.”

  “What about Germany?”

  “Germany grows troublesome.”

  “You must find someone able to cross the Channel without being noticed. My husband suspects nothing. I want to keep it that way.”

  “We will locate the right person. Money is always a powerful inducement. In today’s climate there are always those who can be persuaded to join nearly any cause.”

  “I must remain able to move about freely in England. Introducing an unknown could jeopardize the peaceful slumber of our associates there.”

  “What about . . . your son?”

  “Hmm,” murmured the woman thoughtfully. “An intriguing possibility. He is yet young. But the time may come.”

  “I will speak to the committee. We will proceed with caution. I will trust no untested newcomer with vital information. We will discuss further this possibility I have raised. In the meantime, you know what to do with this.”

  He slid a manila packet across the table.

  “Borsheff will have it within the week.”

  “What do you have for me?”

  Another envelope was exchanged.

  Their business completed, there was little more to be said. The man stood first and left, followed at an appropriate interval by the woman, whose exit took her in the opposite directi
on.

  As she went, she heeded neither pink clustered blooms on the trees nor the merry strains of the sidewalk accordionist. Flowers and springtime were for those with happy music in their souls. The footsteps of these two beat to the distant drum roll of revolution, not the harmonies of springtime dances.

  43

  The London Rutherfords

  Several hours had passed by the time Amanda Rutherford again wandered back toward Heathersleigh Hall.

  “Amanda . . . where have you been?” asked her mother as Amanda entered through the kitchen. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  Jocelyn Rutherford was just pouring boiling water from a kettle into two ornate silver teapots, while Sarah Minsterly set biscuits and assorted cakes onto a large tray.

  “We have guests, remember, dear,” Jocelyn went on. “Please wash up and then come to the east drawing room.”

  “Must I, Mother?—I’m really very tired,” replied Amanda with the hint of a whine, her mood souring with the first claim made upon her obedience.

  “I want you to see them, dear. Your father’s cousin and his family don’t visit very often.”

  Amanda’s face knotted in irritation. It was not so much that she did not want to visit her relatives, just that she resented whatever might be requested of her. She was actually curious, for it had been some time since she had laid eyes on any of the London side of the clan.

  Fortunately for the sake of family harmony, notwithstanding lunch at the cottage, the long walk had drained some of her physical energy toward open resistance. After another moment she left the kitchen for her room without further comment. She changed her dress and shoes, combed her hair, and five minutes later she entered the drawing room with a sulky look—more and more characteristic of the normal expression of her countenance.

  Sir Charles’ first cousin Gifford, though without title, had, like his own father before him, done well for himself in the business world and was of some repute in certain of London’s financial circles. That he continued to enjoy the family name, in spite of the fact that the male line of inheritance had gone to Charles from their shared grandfather, was accounted for by the marriage of Gifford’s mother to a distant cousin with no direct connection to the family other than his name. Her married name thus remained the same as her maiden. The two cousins were both now Rutherfords more by accident than reason of heritage, and notwithstanding the divergent destinies toward which both were bound.

  Gifford was in fact not an unimportant man, quite well connected in governmental and financial circles. Though Charles’ recently bestowed title and rising stature among London’s political elite annoyed Gifford considerably, he was himself not without almost equal influence. But the fact that however wealthy he might become he could never hope to be addressed as lord, while his cousin was not only a lord of the manor but a knight as well, made him all the more determined to reach the pinnacle of worldly success in whatever avenues lay open to him.

  His son Geoffrey, seated beside him with his tea laced with sugar and his mouth full of biscuits, was a notable example of that obnoxious breed of offspring who has been given everything money can buy and taught along with it that money can buy everything. The result was an eight-year-old character declining as rapidly in one direction as the body surrounding it was developing in the other, and giving every indication that he would grow even more self-indulgent and self-centered than his Mammon-worshiping father.

  As heir to a fortune mounting higher by the day, the boy had had every advantage lavished upon him. He studied with the most expensive tutors, wore nothing but the finest clothes in the latest of fashion, and was already being groomed to follow a path that would lead from Eton to university and perhaps even to the House of Commons one day. He could carry on a conversation with adults as well as any twelve-year-old, and he knew more about compound interest even than did Amanda’s father. His cheeks were pudgy, for he ate as well as he dressed. They were also pale, for he was indoors more than he was out. Whether he would be good-looking as the years advanced it was difficult to tell. Greed had early come to dominate the outlook of his eyes, a quality certain to ruin any countenance, however appealing otherwise might be its features.

  Charles and Gifford Rutherford, as cousins, had spent a good deal of time together as youngsters, though the fact had done little to draw them closer then or now. The spirits of the two men, even prior to Charles’ conversion and especially so now, were motivated by such opposite objectives that it could hardly be said that respect flowed between them. The pained compassion Charles felt for Cousin Gifford was met by a silent and disdainful tolerance from the latter toward the former.

  Gifford’s wife, Martha, in the midst of a monologue concerning a certain dress she had recently purchased for the Chelsea ball next month, had just taken a second tea cake when Amanda walked in. A new round of greetings were exchanged, to which Amanda replied with forced smiles.

  “Is this my little Amanda?” Martha Rutherford enthused, the tea cake poised halfway to her mouth. “My, what a big girl you have become.”

  The following bite into the tea cake afforded Amanda opportunity to walk across the floor. She sat down in a chair some distance from the conversation which attempted now to continue. She gave but cursory glance of greeting to the other members of the visiting family. Her brother George, now eleven, sat in a chair beside her father, obviously uncomfortable in his stiff collar but managing to behave himself. Younger sister Catharine, grown now into a lively but sweetly behaved five-year-old, occupied Jocelyn’s lap. “Amanda,” said Charles, “you remember your cousin Geoffrey?”

  Now Amanda glanced up. Of course she remembered Gifford’s son, a year younger than she was. She also remembered she didn’t like him!

  Before she had a chance to think further, Geoffrey jumped from the chair he had been occupying.

  “Show me the tower, Amanda,” he said, walking over and standing in front of her. “Father said if I came you would show it to me.”

  “I don’t want to go outside.”

  “Father promised I would be able to see it,” whined the boy.

  “Amanda, please,” interposed Jocelyn with attempted calm. “Geoffrey and his parents have come a long way for a visit.”

  “Let George show him, then.”

  “I want you to take me there,” insisted Geoffrey, who was every bit Amanda’s match. Now that it was clear she did not want to take him, nothing would satisfy him short of gaining his will over hers.

  As she was prepared to plant her feet in outright refusal, suddenly a new thought entered Amanda’s brain. A bright expression came over her face.

  “All right!” she said, smiling cheerily. “Come on, Geoffrey,” she added in a friendly tone. She jumped up from her seat and walked quickly from the room. Geoffrey followed, happy in what he thought was his victory, while Jocelyn and Charles exchanged surprised glances at their daughter’s sudden cooperativeness.

  George, however, remained where he was. He had more reasons than interest in the adult discussion to avoid inclusion in the outing. He wanted no opportunity for questions that might reveal to their cousin what he had recently discovered.

  After Amanda and Geoffrey had exited through the French doors into the garden, the conversation in the drawing room continued in much the same vein as previously.

  “I say,” remarked Gifford, “now that you’re so interested in matters of religion, no doubt you often make use of the Hall’s old family Bible.”

  “I don’t think I know of it,” said the lord of the manor.

  “Come now, Charles—a lover of books like yourself! You must be having me on.”

  “It would take several lifetimes to know intimately every book in the library upstairs,” answered Sir Charles. “I think I am at least familiar with most of them, and honestly, Gifford, I know of no family Bible.”

  “My mother used to talk of it. She said her father spoke of it as quite an unusual heirloom, which he misplaced and
never was able to find.”

  Charles did not reply that while growing up he had heard similar rumors, passed down from his father, and different only in the conviction expressed by one or two on the Devon side of the family tree that the Bible had been stolen from the Hall by the London Rutherfords.

  “Well, I shall keep my eyes open for it,” said Charles.

  “If you run across it, my good man, I should very much like to see it.”

  44

  Amanda and Cousin Geoffrey

  Meanwhile, once outside, Amanda hurried along the back wall of the house toward the northeast tower. It was the highest portion of the structure, reachable by any number of interior corridors. Why Amanda chose this long way around was anyone’s guess. No doubt her reasoning was based on the fact that the longer the distance they had to traverse, the more difficulty her chubby cousin was likely to have. Geoffrey tried his best to keep up with her, but soon he was breathing hard.

  “Slow down, Amanda,” he said.

  She did not reply. Geoffrey spoke again.

  “Father says Heathersleigh should belong to him, not your father,” he said.

  “That’s a lie!” rejoined Amanda in as loud a voice as she dared, for they were not altogether out of earshot of the rest of their families.

  “He says your father is just letting the property run down. He would buy back all the land that has been lost. My father says he would turn it into a fortune.”

  “What business is it of his anyway?” retorted Amanda, turning to face her cousin with a scowl.

  “It’s the family estate. We’re just as much Rutherfords as you.”

  “My father’s the lord of the manor of Heathersleigh,” said Amanda.

  “My father’s not impressed.”

  “The title and the estate both belong to him!”

  They were farther away now, and in consequence her voice grew louder and her tone more sassy.

  “You shouldn’t even be Rutherfords,” Amanda taunted. “That’s only your name because of some old cousin nobody cares about.”