Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  “Surely it’s not as serious as all that.”

  “I don’t want to be an independent woman, Charles,” she persisted, “even if it’s only silently and invisibly. I want you to be my head. I want you to seek God for me. I want you to tell me what you want me to do. I want you to help me, lead me, guide me, as a pastor or priest would do.”

  Charles sat dumbfounded, trying to take in this new relational twist his wife had thrown at him.

  “Let me see if I understand you,” he said after a moment. “What you’re saying is that marriage isn’t supposed to be a partnership between equals—”

  “I didn’t say that, exactly. Equal in worth, yes . . . but with different roles to occupy. And I’m not sure you and I have seen those roles very clearly up until now.”

  She went on to explain the distinction as Maggie had explained it to her.

  “What if I do something selfish?” he asked after a few minutes.

  “I trust you anyway, even though you’ll make mistakes,” she said.

  “Then as the first act of this newly appointed head of the Rutherford home, I shall pray about all this we’ve talked about and see what our Father would have me . . . that is, have us do.”

  Jocelyn smiled. “I knew I could trust you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maggie said that was the sign whether a man truly understood what rule in the home meant—if he asked God what to do rather than make every decision on the basis of what he himself might want.”

  “So you mean I passed my first test?” smiled Charles.

  “With flying colors!” laughed Jocelyn. “The truest sign of godly manhood, Maggie said, is when a man realizes that headship doesn’t originate with him at all, but flows through him from God.”

  60

  Wintry Surprise

  The rest of the summer passed uneventfully. Charles and Jocelyn Rutherford continued to accustom themselves to the many changes in outlook their new faith gradually brought them. Charles stopped in on Timothy Diggorsfeld in London as he had opportunity, and the minister paid another visit to Heathersleigh in mid-September.

  The leaves turned. The harvest was brought in. Gradually a nip crept into the air, that hint of sharpness which said winter had probably arrived in Scotland and was headed toward more southern climes as well.

  Black clouds gathered on the horizon one day toward the end of the first week of December as afternoon gave way to evening. But owing to the mild temperature and relative stillness of the air, Jocelyn Rutherford suspected nothing. It is true that she woke chilled some time after midnight and sought another blanket for their bed. But still she had no idea just how rapidly and how far the temperature was falling.

  When Jocelyn awoke in the morning and walked sleepily to the window, to her surprise she saw the fields and forests of Devonshire lying buried beneath a quiet and wintry blanket of purest white.

  “Charles . . . Charles, get up!” she exclaimed in delight. “It snowed.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Charles, rolling lazily over in bed to face her.

  “It snowed last night!”

  “It hardly ever snows in Devon and Cornwall.”

  “But it did, Charles—come look! Oh, it’s beautiful.”

  Already Jocelyn was dressing as if she were a child again and couldn’t wait to get out in it. Never having lived where snow fell with regularity, it would always be new to her.

  By the time Charles got to the window and beheld the sight, already Jocelyn was scurrying downstairs. Charles dressed and hurried after her. He found his wife standing in front of the open kitchen door, frigid air streaming in, beholding the sight.

  “I just love it!” she said.

  “From the looks of those footprints,” said Charles, pointing to the trail that led from the side door across to the stables, “you’re not the only one anxious to get your feet cold and wet. Hector must have already made it out to tend the horses.”

  “I’m not so sure it was Hector,” replied Jocelyn. “They look like smaller feet than his.”

  “Only one way to find out!” Suddenly Charles had charged past her and out into the three-inch blanket.

  “Charles . . . come back!” she laughed. “Your boots . . . you’ll freeze!”

  But he was already tromping across the buried lawn, kicking up great sprays of fluffy powder in all directions and laughing like a boy.

  “Wait for me!” cried Jocelyn, running after him with as little thought for her feet as he had shown for his. Before she had taken three or four steps, suddenly a hastily assembled snowball flew past her head.

  “Charles—you stop that!” she laughed. “Two can play that game, you know!” Jocelyn bent down and quickly formed a ball of her own which, three seconds later, exploded in the middle of Charles’ back. He tossed two or three more in his wife’s direction, then turned and made for the stables. Several more snowballs flew past him, and he ducked out of their path.

  “George, my boy—it’s you,” he exclaimed, running inside as a frozen clump smacked against the wall beside the door with a dull thud.

  The next moment Jocelyn ran inside.

  “My hands are frozen!” she exclaimed. “George—what are you doing out here?”

  “It snowed,” George replied matter-of-factly, continuing on with his project, thinking nothing out of the ordinary about his father and mother engaging in a snowball fight at half-past seven in the morning. He was well used to their playful antics.

  “We know!” laughed both Charles and Jocelyn in unison.

  “I’m making a sled, Papa,” said the boy. “I’m going to take it up onto the hill and slide down.”

  “Good for you, George—how will you do it?” asked Charles, rubbing his hands together as he approached George’s workbench.

  “I found these two long pieces of metal—”

  “You two go on with your sled,” interrupted Jocelyn. “I’m going back inside to warm up and put on some dry shoes!”

  ————

  An hour later, the family was seated around the breakfast table, all five faces red from the cold and aglow with excitement as everyone spoke enthusiastically. Even Sarah and Hector seemed to have been injected with the festive spirit brought on by the snowfall. Amanda and Catharine had already been outside long enough to get thoroughly cold and wet and were dressed in the second of what would be numerous changes of clothing before the day was over. Everyone shouted out their plans and ideas for the day all at once.

  “Can we build a snowman, Papa?” said five-year-old Catharine.

  “Of course you can, my dear, just so long as you wear your mittens. Snow can be very dangerous for little fingers, you know.”

  “I want to go sliding on George’s sled,” said Amanda. “Will you make one for all of us, Papa?”

  “We’ll see what we can do. If not, I’m sure George won’t mind sharing. We’ll all go out to the hill together. I might try it myself! How about you, Jocie?”

  “I’ll try. But I’ve never been on a sled in my life. We didn’t have snow in India when I was a girl. The only thing I ever did with snow is eat it—and my London friends taught me that one holiday in the Lake District.”

  Suddenly a look of inspiration came over Charles’ face.

  “I’ve got it!” he said. “George, my boy, let’s take your engineering design a step further. What do you say to you and me making some iron rails to attach to the wheels of one of the carriages? We’ll immobilize the axles so that when it’s pulled it has to slide along the ground—we’ll turn it into a sleigh! Then we’ll hitch it up to Red Lady and take a ride.”

  “A sleigh ride—how wonderful!” exclaimed Jocelyn. “Oh, Charles, when will it be ready?”

  “What do you say, George—shall you and I get working on it right after breakfast?”

  At the moment George had a piece of toast in his mouth, but he nodded eagerly.

  “Then a sleigh ride after lunch it shall be!” an
nounced Charles. “We’ll go cut a Christmas tree in the woods.”

  “And visit the McFees,” said Jocelyn, “—oh, and I’ll show the children how to make sugar snow the way we did in Keswick! It will be so much fun.”

  “I still want to make a snowman,” said Catharine.

  “You shall have all morning, while George and I are busy with the sleigh.”

  “And I still want to go sledding,” said Amanda.

  “We’ll take the sled along and go sledding, and we’ll make sugar snow and visit the McFees and cut a Christmas tree. We’ll just have a regular adventure all afternoon!”

  61

  The Sleigh Ride

  Four hours later the family Rutherford set out for their ride in the sleigh, newly fabricated by father and son.

  “Just think, children,” said Charles as he gave Red Lady the rein and the sleigh started on its way, its makeshift runners jerking only a little before gaining momentum, “in a little less than three weeks it will be Christmas, our third holy season as a Christian family. Everything about Christmas is so much more meaningful now, isn’t it?”

  “Did it snow in Bethlehem, Papa?” asked Catharine.

  “I don’t know, dear. I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s warmer there than here. And the Bible says the shepherds were out in their fields. I don’t think they would have been out had it been snowing.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s the best part of Christmas, do you think? What’s the most special of all?”

  “Presents!” said Catharine and Amanda at once.

  “No doubt, no doubt!” laughed Charles. “But what’s the most significant about Christmas?”

  “The baby Jesus,” suggested George.

  “That’s probably what most people would say. What else? What’s the greatest gift at Christmas?”

  Now it was quiet for some time as they whisked along.

  “Jesus himself, don’t you mean?” asked Jocelyn at length. “That’s what Christmas means, that Jesus was born.”

  “That is surely why we celebrate Christmas,” rejoined Charles. “So what is God’s greatest gift to us?”

  “Jesus,” repeated Jocelyn.

  “What did Jesus bring us?”

  “Salvation.”

  “How did he do that? How could he do that?”

  Jocelyn thought for a moment. The children listened to varying degrees as they watched the snowy countryside glide along beside them. They were used to their father’s way of teaching and trying to get them to think about things in new ways—questioning, discussing, and sharing his own observations.

  “Because Jesus is God,” suggested Jocelyn.

  “Right. So what was his gift?”

  “I think I finally see what you’re getting at,” she said at length. “God gave us himself.”

  “Exactly,” rejoined Charles. “I was turning it over in my mind the whole time George and I were working this morning. Suddenly it dawned on me that God himself is the wonderful message of Christmas. He sent Jesus to us so that he could show us himself as our loving Father. That’s what he was giving us—himself.”

  “But they’re one, aren’t they?”

  “Of course. It’s impossible to separate them. But his fatherhood was God’s most precious gift to mankind. And he sent Jesus to earth to give it to us. Jesus is not the gift in himself, but the bearer of the gift. The gift is the good news that we have a Father in heaven who loves us and whom we can trust.”

  “It makes so much sense now that you say it,” replied Jocelyn thoughtfully. “Of course that was the reason Jesus came, wasn’t it, because he said so himself—to tell us about the Father. He said it over and over.”

  “Timothy is constantly stressing that,” said Charles, “—that Jesus came to let men and women know the wonderful and amazing truth that had been kept obscured through Old Testament times.”

  “In other words, Jesus’ birth means that the Son has a Father.”

  Charles nodded. “It was about more than a baby being born. It was that the baby had been sent by his Father, the Father of all mankind.”

  “I thought Jesus came to bring salvation, Papa,” said George.

  “He did, my boy. Jesus came to provide the way to salvation, which exists nowhere else but in the Father’s loving and forgiving heart. Without God’s fatherhood there is no salvation. It is because he loves us with a father’s unconditional love that he—the Father—saves us. Such was Jesus’ purpose for living here on earth, to take us by the hand and bring us to the Father’s heart of love. That was the purpose of his dying too, the whole purpose of the cross—reconciliation with our forgiving Father.”

  “Everything you’ve been saying makes Christmas suddenly seem so much larger,” said Jocelyn.

  “Timothy often says that everything of God’s is so much larger than we think,” said Charles thoughtfully, “—especially his salvation.”

  “Why did it take us so long to see the largeness of God’s ways?”

  “Spiritual insight is such a curious thing, Jocie,” sighed Charles. “Timothy says that small-minded men are forever eager to place boundaries around what God does, or can do, or might do, so that they can explain his ways and means to the satisfaction of their finite intellects.”

  “Are such boundaries a bad thing?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Charles slowly.

  He paused, and gradually a smile spread over his face. “I think I know what Timothy might say in response.”

  “What?”

  “That some of them might be necessary to help us understand what might not otherwise be understandable to our earthly minds. But he would probably be quick to add that God’s work among men has fewer boundaries than we generally think.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Boundaries and limitations speak of finiteness,” Charles went on, “and by definition God is infinite. Especially must God’s love and salvation not be limited by man’s interpretations—and by the boundaries man would attempt to set for the extent of their reach.”

  Jocelyn nodded as she contemplated the implications of what her husband had just said.

  They had by now left the Hall out of sight and entered a wooded region about a mile west of the McFee cottage. As the day was cold and still, the fluffy powder yet clung to every limb and branch, transforming the entire landscape into a white, sparkling wonderland.

  “It is so beautiful!” exclaimed Jocelyn for the twentieth time that day.

  “Keep your eyes on the lookout for a Christmas tree, children,” said Charles. “We want one as beautiful as the queen’s!”

  “Could we cut two trees, Charles?” said Jocelyn. “I’ve been wanting to do something this Christmas for poor Mrs. Blakeley down in the village.”

  “A good idea, Jocie. I’ll take it over to Rune myself. Might give me a chance to talk to him.”

  “Then I’ll bake them a ham and give it to his wife later.—Oh, there’s a good spot of thick snow. Could we stop, Charles? It’s perfect for sugar snow.”

  He reined in Red Lady. In an instant George, Amanda, and Catharine were over the sides of the temporary sleigh and tearing off through the snow.

  “Children, come back! I’ve a treat for you,” called Jocelyn after them.

  But already snowballs were flying. Luckily Catharine was well bundled, her head protected by a white fleecy hat tied securely in place down over her ears, for she quickly had the worst of the battle. Giggling with delight, she tried in vain to return the volleys from her brother and sister.

  “George, stop that!” yelled Amanda. A white blob had just smacked the side of her head.

  “George, not in the face or head,” said Charles.

  “I didn’t mean to, Amanda,” said George.

  “You did too!” she shot back. “You’ve just been waiting to throw one right at me.”

  “I wasn’t aiming for your head.”

  “Yo
u were too!”

  “Children, please,” said Jocelyn, “I brought sugar and some cream and vanilla. If we mix them with the soft snow we can make ice cream. Here are cups for you all—go fill them with snow. Then bring them here, and I’ll pour cream and vanilla and sprinkle sugar over them.”

  The three scampered off.

  “Always the activity director,” laughed Charles.

  “I never did things like this when I was a girl. So I’m enjoying it now!”

  “You’re quite a mother, do you know? Our three children are the luckiest children in all the world.”

  “Stop, Charles—you’ll embarrass me.”

  “I am perfectly serious. You always make things fun for the children. I don’t know how you always come up with such ideas.”

  Husband and wife were interrupted by the sounds of argument.

  “Find your own snow, Amanda,” George was saying.

  “You took the best place. Give me some of it!” As she spoke, Amanda scooped up a handful in front of George, knocking over the cup he had been packing.

  “Children, for heaven’s sake,” called their father good-humoredly. “The whole forest is full of snow. There’s enough for ten thousand cupsful. Surely you don’t have to both take it from the exact same spot.”

  “George took the best place,” insisted Amanda.

  “I did not!”

  “The snow’s all dirty everywhere else.”

  “You’d just want mine wherever I went.”

  “Please, children, can’t one of you move to somewhere else? There’s a whole world of snow!”

  With resignation, George stood and began to move away. As he did, he gave a kick of snow in his sister’s direction.

  “George kicked me!” she cried.

  “I did not. It was only a little snow. Don’t be such a baby.”

  “George, Amanda, stop arguing this minute,” said Charles, at last losing his patience.