Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  The day was a warm one. An early morning fog had blown off, and now a gentle breeze wafted pleasant summer smells across the grassy downs. Cows and sheep grazed in the distant pastures. The air was cool and quiet inside the cobweb-filled stables. George had been attempting to drag an old rusting piece of machinery of unknown purpose into the light where he could see more clearly to tinker with it. By the time Amanda and Catharine joined him, he had succeeded in taking the thing more than half apart.

  “What is it for?” asked Catharine.

  “It’s not for anything, silly,” said Amanda. “It’s just an old piece of rubbish.”

  “It’s not rubbish,” objected George, “—at least it won’t be when I get through with it. I think I can make it into something that works!”

  “I don’t care about that old thing,” she said, losing interest in George’s project almost immediately. “I want an adventure.”

  “What kind of adventure?” asked Catharine eagerly.

  “You know—like Gulliver or Robinson Crusoe.”

  “What’s a Crusoe?”

  “I’ll show you. I’m going to climb up in the loft,” announced Amanda.

  “Me too!” exclaimed Catharine, following her toward the narrow stairway.

  “Then let me go first,” said George. “I know which boards to step on without falling through.”

  He jumped up from his project and ran after them, then squeezed past his two sisters. Soon all three were scrambling single-file from the steep darkened stairs out onto the floor of the loft. It was considerably darker here than below. Slanted shafts of light shone through cracks and knotholes of the walls to illuminate the place. One small window was situated high on the north wall. The silence was thick and muffled, insulated by stacks of baled straw and hay piled high against the north and east walls. Only a fourth of the year’s supply now remained. It would be replenished in autumn for the Heathersleigh livestock. The fragrant grasses would then fill every square inch of the place all the way to the roof.

  The darkness and quiet, the eerie light and hanging cobwebs, made it feel as if they had entered an altogether different world.

  “It’s dark,” whispered Catharine with the slightest tremble in her voice, as if compelled to silence by something unseen. “Are there ghosts in the stables like in the house, George?”

  “There are no ghosts either here or in the house,” replied her brother.

  “Amanda said Heathersleigh has ghosts.”

  “Well, it hasn’t, Catharine.”

  “Oh, yes it does,” now insisted Amanda. “I’ve heard them in the garret.”

  George knew better than to pursue the discussion.

  The boards under their feet were not even visible, covered over with many years’ accumulation of bits of straw and hay matted down to a thickness of two or three inches. As George walked cautiously across it, the surface appeared as one uniform soft-padded carpet, though he exhorted his sisters to follow exactly behind him.

  “Oh, George, we’re not going to fall through,” said Amanda. “This floor’s as strong as the ground.”

  “Hector told me,” said George.

  “Hector’s only trying to scare you,” insisted his sister, “—look!”

  Amanda scampered off across the floor, jumping and skipping with carefree recklessness.

  “See, I told you—it’s strong as can be!”

  George did not reply. He continued to walk with care, taking Catharine’s hand as they went.

  “I’m going to climb up on the stack and look out the window,” said Amanda.

  “Hector said we aren’t supposed to climb up there,” objected George.

  “I’m tired of hearing what Hector said!” rejoined Amanda. Already she was scrambling up onto the third level of loosely rolled round bales and setting her sights still higher.

  Reluctantly, George let go of Catharine and gingerly made his way after Amanda. Half his time it seemed he was following her for fear of what predicament she might get herself into.

  “Can I come, George?” said Catharine from the floor.

  “Why don’t you climb up to about here,” replied George, pointing out a sturdy platform of straw up about three bales off the loft floor. “Here, give me your hand.”

  Excitedly Catharine reached up as George stretched his hand back down to her.

  “But no higher than this,” he said. “It is tipsy up on top. I don’t want all that straw falling down on top of you.”

  “All right, George.”

  In another moment Catharine had scrambled up to her seat. She was content. George turned and now climbed after the older of his two sisters. But already she had covered considerable distance into a higher region of cobwebs and rafters.

  “Amanda, not so high!” cried George.

  “I’m going to the top,” returned Amanda. “I want to see out the window.”

  “You’ll set it all tumbling. Come down, Amanda!” Hurriedly he scampered after her.

  Amanda said nothing in return. Neither did she slow her attempt to get to the window before George could reach her.

  The stacks remaining in the loft formed roughly a circular pattern around a three-foot square hole in the loft floor. Through this hole, during the winter and spring months, Hector Farnham would toss down to ground level whatever straw and hay was required. Over the months this process had hollowed out an upside-down conical cavity around the hole—a kind of hay funnel leading down to the opening.

  As George and Amanda now made their way upward, they kept clear of the edge of this steep descent, for as George said, the bales nearest it were tipsy and unsteady. From the top of the bale-circle down to the loft floor and hole the distance was probably twelve or fifteen feet.

  Amanda now reached the top of the circular mountain.

  “I’m first!” she cried.

  “Amanda, be careful up there!”

  But Amanda was no more accustomed to heeding her brother’s warnings than she was anyone else’s.

  She got to her feet, stood, then turned to peer out the window. But she could not quite get high enough. Grabbing the sill of the window ledge, she tiptoed with all her might. But the action succeeded only in shoving her feet all the harder against the bale of straw upon which she was standing. Already seriously unsteady, it now wobbled away from the wall.

  Just as George reached her, suddenly Amanda’s precarious footing gave way.

  The roll of straw tumbled down, setting off an avalanche toward the hole in the floor, with Amanda toppling down head over heels in the middle of them.

  Hearing his sister’s scream, George leapt away from the hole to safety.

  In only a few seconds the commotion was over. The slide seemed past, though dust and screams filled the air.

  “George . . . George—help me!” came a muffled cry.

  George peered in the direction of the sound. He could see nothing. Where the hole in the loft had been was now nothing but a pile of fallen hay and straw. And Amanda had fallen straight toward it!

  In a single bound he was down onto the floor of the loft, grabbing Catharine as he flew past her.

  “Catharine, run and bring Hector! Tell him to bring a ladder!”

  Catharine followed him to the stairs. George flew down three at a time and onto the ground floor of the stables. He looked up behind him. There were Amanda’s legs swinging from the ceiling.

  “George!” she screamed. “I’m going to fall!”

  How she had kept from falling through to the ground was a miracle in itself. Somehow she had managed to grab the ledge as she tumbled through. Now she clung by her fingers from the loft floor. Her feet dangled in midair high above the stable floor.

  George glanced hurriedly around. He grabbed a fork and piled up the loose straw that had fallen through.

  “Amanda . . . jump.”

  “I can’t!”

  “You’ll land on straw. I made a pile under you. It won’t hurt.”

  “I can’t. It’
s too far!”

  “The bales will cushion you.”

  “I won’t, I tell you. Get me down!”

  Again George glanced about. Frantically he looked for anything to reach high enough. If he could just get hold of her feet. . . .

  He needed a ladder. But there wasn’t one in the stables.

  George ran to a stool across the floor and dragged it back. Now he scrambled onto the top of it. Carefully he stood.

  “George!”

  He stretched up his hands, though his legs wobbled. He could just reach Amanda’s feet. With his palms upward, he exerted enough pressure so that she could continue holding herself by the ledge.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  “How am I going to get down!” she yelled back.

  “Hector will bring a ladder.”

  But already George’s arms were beginning to tire.

  “Get me down!” demanded Amanda. “I can’t hang on here forever.”

  George did not reply. He knew better than to say anything to her at a time like this.

  It became silent. Both were tired and breathing heavily. Even Amanda judged it prudent to put what remained of her strength to use with her hands, not her tongue.

  Fifteen or twenty seconds later footsteps came running.

  Hector appeared with Catharine on his heels. He ran inside and glanced quickly around.

  “Why, Miss Amanda!” he exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing up there?”

  “Get me down, Hector!”

  Already he was setting down the two legs of the ladder that had come in on his shoulder. Resting it securely on the floor, he steadied it under Amanda.

  The moment the ladder’s two legs were in place, George guided one of Amanda’s feet to the next highest rung with his hand. She felt the wood, tentatively probing it with her foot, then seeing if it would hold her weight. She let go her grip with one hand to grasp the ladder’s rail. A second foot, then second hand, followed. Slowly she descended, then jumped from the ladder to the stable floor.

  “This is all your fault, George,” she said irritably.

  “What are you talking about?” he said. He hadn’t exactly expected thanks from Amanda’s lips. But neither had he expected blame.

  “You and that stupid piece of machinery,” persisted his sister. “If it hadn’t been for that, we would never have gone up in the loft.”

  Amanda now turned and hurried out into the bright sunlight without another word to anyone.

  55

  Unsought Advice

  At tea that same evening, talkative young Catharine blurted out an excited and dramatized rendition of the affair in the loft. Following closer inquiry on Charles’ part, the details were filled in by George. Amanda contributed little to the discussion. She had several nasty scrapes and bruises, and her arms hurt dreadfully. Her mood was not altogether a pleasant one.

  “Well, Catharine, it seems you had an adventure indeed!” laughed Charles.

  “I am only glad no one was hurt,” added Jocelyn. “It sounds as though it could have been very dangerous.”

  “You know, Amanda,” Charles went on a little more seriously, “I’ve been learning that everything that happens contains a lesson for us. There is a good one here for you: Listening to advice keeps you out of trouble—and sometimes out of what could be danger as well.”

  “There was no real danger, Papa,” now replied Amanda. “George has exaggerated the whole thing.”

  “What if you had fallen through to the floor?”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “What if you had?”

  “Then I might have hurt my feet,” shrugged Amanda.

  “You might have broken both your legs,” added her father. “That ceiling is twelve, maybe fifteen feet above the ground. When Hector tosses the bales down from the loft, they land with quite a crash.”

  Amanda did not reply. She knew well enough that she had been in a dangerous situation. She had, in fact, been good and scared. But she wasn’t about to admit it. Besides, at the moment she wasn’t thinking about her legs at all. It was her arms that felt like they’d been broken!

  Her father poured another cup of tea and slowly buttered a slice of bread. When he resumed, it was with thoughtful tone.

  “You children know,” he began, “that I have been discovering many new things recently. There is much that your mother and I still do not understand. We will do many things wrong as we try to apply these new principles of living as Christians. But one thing I have noticed is that the Bible speaks a great deal about foolishness and wisdom. It seems me that one of the key differences between the two is being able to listen to what other people tell you—especially when it goes against something you want to do yourself.”

  He paused and sipped at his tea.

  “I don’t yet know as much about wisdom as I would like to. But it strikes me, Amanda, that your brother was giving you sound advice up in the loft—and you would have done well to listen.”

  “Why should I have?” Amanda finally objected, now that her father’s remarks had started to point in her direction.

  “It would have been wise to listen to it. That is one of the marks of a wise person—listening to others.”

  “I don’t see why I should have to listen to George. He’s no more wise than I am.”

  “In this case he was. Listening to him could have kept you from falling and risking your neck.”

  “If you ask me, it was nothing but his own foolishness with that stupid machine that caused the whole thing.”

  Charles sighed but said no more. Their daughter would apparently have to learn through much more difficult circumstances the same lesson he had tried to give so gently today.

  His years as an acknowledged son of God had been few. But Charles Rutherford was student enough of the human condition to know what likely faced his daughter in the years ahead. He recognized the principle that intensity of character pruning must increase throughout life to whatever extent it is not allowed to accomplish its purpose at less hurtful levels. How much better that relinquishment of self come of one’s own volition.

  The knife of the Spirit’s surgery will penetrate to whatever extent it must. As deep into the parent trunk as self has ruled, though no deeper, must slice the knife of the master Husbandman. Only by such pruning will the plant of human character discover the freedom to develop and stretch high its branches and blossom with the fruit of its essential nature.

  Most lessons come gently at first, whispering their truths softly into receptive hearts. Those who discern them gradually and steadily extend their roots deeper into the well-nourished soils of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. For those who refuse to heed these subtle Spirit-promptings, however, corrections, warnings, and admonitions must be sent from on high with increasing severity . . . until they are heeded.

  Wisdom’s voice will not be silenced.

  Charles looked up and caught Jocelyn’s eye. Her expression told him she was thinking the same thing he was—that they must pray diligently for their daughter in the days to come.

  56

  A Puzzling Scripture

  Jocelyn Rutherford sat alone in her sitting room. It was midweek. Charles was in London. The children were resting. The house was quiet, and Jocelyn was in a prayerful and pensive mood.

  Her mind had been preoccupied all day—active, thoughtful.

  Good thoughtful. Anticipating. Something seemed at hand. Whatever she had stumbled onto, Jocelyn sensed that it had the potential to affect her and Charles forever after.

  She didn’t know where today’s reading would lead. Yet something deep inside her pulsed with an excitement for what was coming . . . for something God was about to show her.

  At Timothy Diggorsfeld’s suggestion, Jocelyn and Charles had been reading regularly through the New Testament—both together and on their own. In the several months that had passed since Timothy’s visit to Heathersleigh, she and Charles had worked their way through most of the Gospels and
Epistles and had even begun reading a few for the second time.

  For Jocelyn, this discipline of Bible reading had been a revelation. So much that she read was new and alive, with a practical vitality she had never dreamed possible. How could she ever have considered the Bible a stale and old-fashioned book?

  During her morning time alone with the Lord two days ago, for example, she had come upon a passage of Scripture that jolted her awake where she sat. Two or three times she read it through. Ever since, the puzzling words had continued to stir in her brain. She had hardly been able to think of anything else. And one of the marginal references in her Bible leading her back to the book of Genesis had further amplified her perplexity over the passage’s meaning.

  When instructing them about their New Testament study, Diggorsfeld had been extremely clear about one point. Over and over he had emphasized it: “Don’t read the Bible if you’re not going to do as I’m about to explain. Without this, reading and learning spiritual principles can do you more harm than good.”

  She and Charles had continued to listen attentively.

  “There are two things you must do to make the Scriptures alive,” the pastor went on. “The first is this: As you read, say to the Lord, ‘How does this apply to me? Specifically. What does it have to do with my daily life and my relationships with others? What does it have to do with my attitudes, my outlook, my values, my priorities? What does it have to do with how I conduct myself and how I think?’ These are questions you have to ask. Then you must say: ‘Lord, what changes do you want to make in my life on the basis of this scriptural principle I am reading? What growth do you have for me here? What do you want me to do about it?’”

  He paused and looked seriously at his new friends.

  “Does this make sense?” he asked. “Have I been clear?”

  “It seems clear enough to me,” replied Charles.