Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  “Now you’re the one who’s lying!”

  “No I’m not. Besides, my father knows the queen. Does yours?”

  “Yes he does!”

  “My father’s in Parliament. He’s going to be prime minister one day.”

  “My father’s rich,” declared Geoffrey smugly. “Everyone in London knows him.”

  “My father’s a knight,” rejoined Amanda.

  “If my father had his way, he’d take Heathersleigh away from your father.”

  “He’ll never do it. I won’t let him.”

  “Ha—what can you do about it? You’re just a girl!”

  “I’m going to be in Parliament someday too. Then you won’t talk to me like that.”

  “Ha and double ha! You make me laugh.”

  “Just you wait and see.”

  “My father thinks Heathersleigh should belong to the most important Rutherford in England, not a religious do-nothing like your father.”

  The words stung Amanda. They went all the deeper in that she harbored similar thoughts. But she would never admit her own annoyances to one so despicable as Geoffrey.

  “How dare he say such a thing!” she cried.

  “I never said my father said it!” said Geoffrey. Suddenly he realized he had given away too much about the nature of the conversation between his father and mother on their way to Heathersleigh an hour earlier.

  “How else would you know he was thinking that!” snapped Amanda. “Your father will never own Heathersleigh!”

  Geoffrey was already shrewd enough in the ways of the world to realize it best not to contest the point further, so he held his peace. He fell into step behind Amanda as she now led the way through the thick wooden doorway at which they had arrived. He continued to follow up a narrow circular flight of stairs.

  Breathing heavily—Geoffrey more than Amanda, for his waist was as puffy as his cheeks, his legs were shorter, and his suit was tight-fitting about the neck—the two cousins at length reached the topmost point of Heathersleigh Hall.

  A single room sat atop the cylindrical stone tower, from whose several windows one could look out upon marvelous vistas of the countryside in every direction. What had been the original purpose of the construction, no living person knew. It had been used through the years as lookout, as prayer chapel, as incarceration chamber, as secret place of play for servant children and their friends, and even as lodging quarters for a tutor who had been hired to teach the brother of Amanda’s great-grandfather. What had been the latter’s son’s carpentry scheme, no one knew. Old Lord Henry Rutherford’s fear of his wife’s specter, coupled with his own insanity, had closed off any light he might have been able to shed on the Hall’s history. If anyone was going to find out what had been in his mind when it was still functioning with clarity, George was at present the most likely candidate. He had little inkling yet, however, into what mysterious and spectral pathways his explorations had inadvertently stumbled. The tower was not currently utilized for other than an occasional visit to gaze out upon the Devonshire landscape.

  “Here, you go in first,” said Amanda, turning the key that stood in the lock, then swinging back the door, which ground on its metal hinges. “I’ll let you have the first view.”

  Geoffrey crept through the door into the empty room.

  Suddenly he felt a shove against his side. The next instant he heard the door slam behind him, and he was left alone within the round stone walls.

  “Amanda, you let me out of here!” he cried.

  “Not until you take back what you said about Heathersleigh running down.”

  “I will not—it’s true!”

  “Take it back, Geoffrey! Say that we’re the only ones with a right to Heathersleigh.”

  “No, I won’t! If Father says it should be his, I believe him.”

  “Liar!”

  “Let me out of here . . . I’ll tell Father!”

  Amanda crept to the edge of the stairs and sat down.

  “Amanda!” cried a voice behind her.

  Amanda said nothing. She continued to sit silent and unmoving.

  “Amanda . . . please!” Geoffrey’s voice now contained a pleading tone. The eight-year-old was surfacing again, as the young man of the world retreated into the background, for he had begun to be afraid.

  Several seconds of utter silence followed. Amanda held her breath, determined not to be heard. Neither could she detect the ear pressed tightly to the other side of the keyhole, where in fact another key should have been, straining for any sound of her breathing.

  Another few moments passed, followed gradually by the whimpering sounds of the forlorn boy beginning at last to cry. She had conquered him. She continued to sit in the silence.

  Presently it grew quiet on the other side of the door. Amanda listened intently. Geoffrey’s crying ceased. Several long seconds of deathly silence passed.

  Amanda thought she heard something, although what, she couldn’t tell. It sounded like the scraping of stones followed a few moments later by a kind of faint jingling noise.

  What was Geoffrey up to? Now it went silent again.

  ————

  Inside the room, Geoffrey had crept back to the door to listen. Suddenly a great metallic clank sounded against his ear as the bolt slipped back out of its slot. He leapt back a step, then stood upright and gave a shove at the door. It gave way and he found himself on the landing.

  The only evidence of Amanda that remained was the sound of her quickly descending footsteps echoing back up the circular staircase.

  45

  Difference of Opinion

  The day had already become a warm one, though the sun had not yet advanced more than two-thirds of the way to its zenith. The ground was moist and the grass green, lush, and growing rapidly from recent rains. Yet the work at which the men labored was as dry and dusty as had it been August instead of late May.

  The season for sheep shearing had come, and though Gresham Mudgley could not have afforded to pay a single man to assist him, on this day he had four besides himself and his stout, hardworking wife, Betsy, engaged in the yearly ritual.

  By midday, they were nearly done. Mudgley’s flock of Wensleydales and Oxfords was not large, though most years it took him and Betsy all of two or three days to shed his several hundred animals of their winter coats.

  A single-horse carriage approached. The workers paused and glanced up, amid tiny struggling hooves and legs and a cacophony of bleating.

  “’Tis yer lady wife, Master Charles!” called out Bobby McFee, as he set a newly shorn animal upright on its feet, giving its white, woolless rump a slap and sending it scurrying off across the grass suddenly free from its burden.

  Charles glanced up. “So it is, Bobby,” he rejoined. “Perhaps she’s come to lend us a hand.”

  “I agreed to accept yer kind offer, milord,” said a third man, the owner of the sheep, who at the moment was clipping the last strands from the animal that lay under Charles Rutherford’s restraining hands, “but I won’t be letting your wife sully her fair hands in the coarse dirty hair of my darlings.”

  “Not to worry, Gresham. I think she’s come on another errand.”

  Charles righted the animal he had held for the expert clipping of Mudgley’s hand. Now he sent it on its way after Bobby McFee’s.

  “Jocelyn!” he said, rising from his knees and walking toward the head of the larger beast his wife had just reined to a stop. “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?” He took the reins while Jocelyn jumped to the ground. He gave her a kiss.

  “The sheep all look so funny and small,” she said, glancing around where some of the newly shorn animals grazed in the grass nearby. “I never accustom myself to how tiny the animals actually are that hide under all that wool.”

  “They do shrink considerably!”

  “But, Charles—you said you would have the whole flock shorn in two hours with your new electrical device.”

  “What would you tell my wife,
Gresham, in answer to her question?” said Charles with a smile, turning toward Mudgley.

  “Meaning no disrespect, sir,” answered the shepherd humbly, “but the old ways of doing things are usually the best ways of doing them.”

  Charles laughed. “In this case, Jocelyn, that is precisely the case. My contraption broke down within thirty minutes—just like all the others.”

  “How did it work until then?”

  “Let me just say that Mudgley and his wife had five naked sheep on their way while George and I were still struggling with our first! Some day I will get the thing working properly. But for now, no modern device can keep pace with sharp clippers in the hand of an expert.”

  As they spoke, Mudgley took the brief lull as opportunity to send his sharpening stone scraping with a few quick deft strokes across the blades of his scissors.

  “Well, I thought you all might be in need of refreshment,” she said laughing. “I have lemonade and tea, depending on whether you want something cold or hot.” She turned back to the carriage, and lifted a large basket out and onto the ground.

  “Ah, the lady’s an angel!” exclaimed McFee.

  “No, Bobby,” replied Jocelyn laughing, “only a wife who recognizes hard work and a hot sun.—Where is George, Charles?” she asked.

  “In the pasture south of the house with Bloxholm and the dogs. They’re rounding up the last of the herd.”

  “So, even without my husband’s invention, do you mean you’re almost finished?”

  “That we are, milady,” replied Mudgley, setting down stone and scissors and now approaching, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. The gesture accomplished little, however, for his arm was sweating as profusely as was his face. “And I’m more indebted to yer husband and son, and McFee here and Bloxholm, than I can say.”

  She poured out a tall glass of lemonade from the canister, and handed it to the shepherd.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, taking it and downing half its contents in a single swallow.

  “Where is your wife, Mr. Mudgley?” asked Jocelyn.

  “She just left for the cottage, milady,” he replied, nodding his head toward the dwelling at the edge of the pasture, “to see what she can find for dinner for the lot of us.”

  “Then I am just in time. I have Sarah making dinner for you all right now over at the Hall. I’ll just run after Mrs. Mudgley and tell her it’s all taken care of, and that I shall expect her to join us.—Charles, how much longer do you think you shall be?”

  “We will have the last of the sheep unclothed within the hour.”

  “Perfect,” said Jocelyn, returning to the carriage, “—You’ll bring everyone over?”

  “Just leave the tea and lemonade!” he laughed. “This is hot work!” He handed her the reins.

  “I’ll ride over and fetch Mrs. Mudgley. I’ll see you all at the Hall.”

  “Thank ye for the refreshment, ma’am!” called the shepherd after her.

  He turned to pick up the blades of his trade. Already Charles had another animal in his grasp awaiting them.

  It was but three or four minutes later when a commotion interrupted them from the general direction in which Jocelyn Rutherford had ridden. The sounds of galloping horses suddenly rose above the bleating of sheep. Even before Mudgley, McFee, and Charles could glance up from the work at which they were occupied, a small red fox darted past at a distance of twenty or thirty yards. Two or three yelping hounds came next, flying across the fields in a howling uproar, heedless of sheep and men alike.

  Pursuing them at breakneck speed rode a young horseman. Only seconds before he had torn around the corner of the Mudgley cottage, sending sod and greenery into the air from Mrs. Mudgley’s patch of vegetables. Her flock of chickens fled for their lives, scattering in a cackling frenzy in every direction. Behind the first rider, equally heedless of the damage being done by the hooves beneath them, galloped a band of a half-dozen or so riders doing their best to keep pace with the boy.

  Observing the careless trespass against his home and garden, Mudgley dropped his scissors, leapt to his feet, and ran yelling in outrage toward the intruders. The same instant Charles let go of the half-naked sheep and likewise jumped up. He sprinted forward between the fox and its human pursuer, who was galloping straight into their midst. The whole fracas added to the considerable consternation of the sheep, who already were scurrying about in bleating dismay on account of the hounds who had just flown by.

  “Whoa—hey there, young man!” cried Charles, running fearlessly in front of the horse with his hands in the air.

  “What the . . . get out of—” cried the boy, as if he had not even seen the sheep-shearing crew until that very instant.

  Whatever disrespect the lad was about to utter was cut short by the scrambling, skidding, rearing motion of his whinnying horse. Charles reached up and grabbed hold of the reins near its mouth. The rider nearly tumbled out of his saddle over the beast’s head. Righting himself quickly, he tried to grab the reins and free himself from Charles’ restraining grasp.

  “Let go!” cried the lad angrily. He lifted his riding whip into the air. “You’re letting the fox get away!”

  “And you have no right to ride across this man’s property so wildly,” rejoined Charles, grabbing the whip out of his hand with a quick and unexpected move. “Now calm yourself or you’ll only agitate your mount all the more.”

  By now the rest of the hunting party had ridden up in a noisy thunder of hooves over the turf, and gradually slowed. They were expensively outfitted in the most fashionable hunting attire, aristocrats every one.

  “What do you think you’re doing!” cried Mudgley, running toward them as they reined in. “You’ve ruined my garden. No doubt you’ve killed more than one of my laying hens with your madcap games!”

  “Tut, tut, old man,” said the leader of the party rudely. “Keep away, or you as well as your chickens shall feel my horse’s feet. Now let us pass—our hounds are disappearing.”

  Still holding the reins of the young man’s horse and leading it along behind him, Charles now approached the leader of the tense scene.

  “I think the law would take Mr. Mudgley’s side in the matter, Holsworthy,” he said in a tone which was the last thing the marquess of Holsworthy anticipated.

  An angry retort was about to escape the latter’s mouth when he suddenly recognized the man who had spoken to him with such confidence. A humorous smile passed across his lips.

  Furiously impotent, the boy, who appeared to be eleven or twelve, fumed in his saddle. “Father, the fox is getting farther away! Make this man let me go.”

  Ignoring his son, the marquess now led his horse a little away from the rest of the group. He motioned Charles aside. Charles handed the reins of the boy’s horse to Bobby McFee—for he had already seen enough not to trust the lad not to bolt if given the chance—then followed.

  As they went, the marquess’s daughter, a girl one year older than her brother, impatiently glanced about for any temporary amusement which might be available. She spotted George some distance away, approaching with the sheep. Slowly she led her horse toward him. She knew who he was, and the fact that he was a boy of approximately her own age and station appealed to her newly developing feminine desire for conquest, however brief might be the encounter.

  Meanwhile, the marquess leaned over in his saddle and spoke to Charles in a confidentially low tone.

  “I must say, Rutherford,” he said with a grin in which a condescending air was notably mingled, “I didn’t know you at first, although the garb of a peasant becomes you. What’s the game?”

  “No game, Holsworthy,” replied Charles. “I am helping Mr. Mudgley with his shearing.”

  “I can see that, my good man,” laughed the marquess incredulously, “but why?”

  “Because he is my neighbor. Now why don’t you take your party in a direction that keeps to the fields and woods.”

  “What does it matter to you, Ruther
ford? It’s only a few vegetables and chickens.”

  “Yes, and they are his very few vegetables and chickens.”

  “Tut, tut, Rutherford. What difference does it make? He is no more than a common shepherd.”

  “He is a man, exactly like you and me. There was no reason for you to ride straight through his garden.”

  An angry reply rose into the marquess’s throat, and his eyes flashed briefly. He thought better of it, however, and swallowed his annoyance. He did not like to be challenged. At the same time he could not help but be cowed by the calm authority of Sir Charles’ bearing. He had heard peculiar things about this near neighbor of his, the lord of the manor of Heathersleigh. Now he had seen evidence of the truthfulness of the rumors with his own eyes. Notwithstanding this ridiculous masquerade as a sheep farmer, however, the fellow was still an influential man in London. It would probably not do to anger him.

  Without another word, the marquess reined his horse around and rejoined the others.

  “Hubert . . . Gwen!” he cried to his offspring, “let’s see if we can still pick up the scent of that fox!”

  He dug his heels into the side of his horse, and led the way, galloping off toward a wooded region. The rest of the mounted party followed. They were soon out of sight.

  46

  Invitation to the Country

  When Charles Rutherford next called at the parsonage of New Hope Chapel in London, he was met at the door by the pastor’s housekeeper.

  “Mr. Diggorsfeld’s gone to the midlands, sir,” she replied to his request.

  “For how long?”

  “He’s been gone more than a week now, Mr. Rutherford.”

  Charles could tell by the tone of her voice that the matter involved something more serious than a holiday.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s his mum, sir. She was very ill.”

  “Was . . . ?”

  “I received word yesterday that she passed on, sir. Mr. Diggorsfeld will be staying to conduct the funeral.”

  “Oh . . . oh, I see. The poor man—were he and his mother close?”

  “Not that Mr. Diggorsfeld confided in me, sir,” replied the woman, “but I would have to answer you no, sir, I don’t think they were. Even as he was leaving, the strain showed on his face. I could tell he thought she was dying, and he didn’t know what to do to help her.”