Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  “I know we made mistakes,” Charles tried to reply. “I’m sorry, Amanda—truly sorry. We honestly tried—”

  “Tried what! Tried to think about me? Did you care about my feelings, my thoughts! Did you ever stop to consider me? Not that I could see!”

  “We have been praying—”

  “Praying! I’m sick of all that. You probably did pray for me—wonderful! Ha, ha, ha!” she laughed with derision. “Prayed!—and then tried to force me to accept everything just because you thought I ought to!”

  “It wasn’t easy, Amanda,” said Jocelyn. “We were new at trying to live as Christians. We didn’t know what to do, either with ourselves or with you children. We did the best we could. We made mistakes—we admit that. Surely you can forgive us that. Did you expect us to be perfect parents in everything we did?”

  Momentarily Amanda was silenced, not because she had heard her mother’s question, but because her anger needed a breath before continuing its rampage.

  “Amanda,” said Charles, his voice subdued, trying to find some way to express himself to her with loving tone, “I am so deeply sorry for the pain I have caused you in the past. You must believe me. I love you so much, and I would never intentionally hurt you. I can understand your anger toward me. Yet I do not see why my decision to resign from the Commons should add to it, or why you would think it has anything to do with you.”

  “Of course, it had everything to do with me,” she spat. “I have the chance to be the daughter of a prime minister instead of wasting away here on the outskirts of nothing, and you want to take that away from me. But even without that, Father, it is still a horrible thing. I don’t believe you’re really going to do it. What about making a difference, about changing the world?”

  “I do not feel that being involved in politics is how the Lord would have me change the world, Amanda.”

  “What other way is there?”

  “The way Jesus did—by prayer, by ministering to the needs of individual men and women.”

  “The way Jesus did!” laughed Amanda. “Jesus, Jesus . . . ha, ha! Can you imagine how stupid that sounds! As if a dead man has anything to do with anything!”

  “Amanda!”

  “I’m sick to death of all that religious talk,” the girl shot back, her anger rising again. “What you really mean is that you’re not going to do what you said. It’s just one more promise you do not intend to keep.”

  Charles sighed in great pain.

  “People change, Amanda,” he said. “Circumstances change. I have changed.”

  “I saw that a long time ago!” rejoined Amanda in a biting tone. “You used to be so concerned with what is wrong with the world. Now you just don’t care.”

  “Your father is not unconcerned, Amanda,” said Jocelyn. “How can you say such a thing?”

  “What would you call it then? He has the chance to influence the course of nations, and he isn’t going to take it.”

  “As I said, I sought the Lord’s will, Amanda,” began Charles, attempting yet again to explain. “I no longer think the Commons to be the most effective way—”

  “It’s always the Lord’s will for you, isn’t it?” she interrupted. “You just can’t think for yourself anymore!”

  “Amanda!” said her mother.

  “I won’t take it back—it’s true. It’s true of both of you.”

  Charles was silent. What could words accomplish now? His daughter’s ears were as plugged as her eyes were unseeing. Apparently other means than his own example would be required for the opening of them both.

  “I’m embarrassed to be the daughter of someone who could help,” she continued her tirade, “who could have an influence on world affairs but would rather walk around the fields and pray. What kind of religion is that, anyway?”

  “Amanda!” said Jocelyn, who had finally had enough. “I want you to apologize to your father.”

  “Why? So I can be a nice quiet girl who does what she’s told so she can go to heaven? I will not! When I’m older, I won’t care about other people as little as you do! Mother, you could have helped Stirling Blakeley. Father, you could help the whole country. But neither of you do anything! I’m ashamed of you both!”

  The words stung deep, burning like knife thrusts in the hearts of father and mother. Tears of anguish rose in Charles’ eyes.

  “When I grow up, my life is going to count for something!” Amanda shouted. “I am going to change the world, Father—even if you don’t!”

  She leapt up, spun around, and ran from the room, leaving her two parents crushed and her brother and sister utterly stunned.

  As the door slammed behind her, the only sounds remaining inside were those of a mother’s quiet weeping. The father, whose eyes were also wet but undimmed of resolve, was already on his knees.

  George sat in shock. Catharine got up, went to her daddy, knelt down beside him, and laid her head against his shoulder and cried. Charles wrapped his arms around his youngest daughter and prayed softly, “Lord, help us all.”

  79

  Thoughts of Far Away

  Amanda sprinted up one flight of stairs, thinking first of the refuge of her room. Face hot and breathing heavily, she paused briefly at the landing, then bounded upward again, taking the stairs two at a time to the top floor of the great Hall. Without a pause this time, she spun to her left and continued running through the long, dimly lit corridor.

  At length she arrived at the end of the passageway, where a small single door sat framed by the stone wall at the end of the wing. She opened it and turned immediately right into a much narrower and even darker hallway, which led her moments later through another door opening into the tower staircase about three-quarters of the way up its height. Walking now, Amanda continued her ascent to the top. George had pestered her to join him up here in his recent explorations, but she hadn’t been interested. She had not been here since the day she had visited it with Geoffrey.

  The key still stood in the lock, though the door was unbolted. She pulled it toward her and walked inside. Here it was deathly quiet. Like a great bass drum Amanda’s heart pounded out a cadence of discontent, while the snare of her emotions pattered in a high-pitched raging tumult. Their combined music was anything but pleasant.

  Still trembling from the heated argument, Amanda walked slowly across the empty stone floor to one of the narrow windows and stood gazing out of it as far as her eyes could see. London lay somewhere in the distance to the east. She could not see the great city, but she could feel its pull.

  As hard as she tried to act sophisticated and older than she was, Amanda was still a child in many ways, and the fancies of her childhood were still bright in her memory. Now, dreamily gazing out, she remembered the excitement of the day she had met the queen. She saw herself walking up the bright red carpet toward the royal dais, then ascending and curtsying before the ageless Victoria.

  I’m going to be prime minister someday, came the remembered words from her lips.

  The queen smiled, then turned to speak with her father. All around, the sounds and sensations of importance and royalty worked their magic in young Amanda Rutherford’s consciousness, deepening the hunger to participate in it all herself. The connection between such participation and the respect and deference it would require never spoiled Amanda’s daydreams. In the airy castles of her imagination, she could be a princess—or a prime minister—without anything being required of her.

  The venerable queen’s voice sounded again in her ears after a mere few seconds.

  . . . turn the world on its ear when her time comes—won’t you, my dear?

  Yes, Your Majesty.

  She had never forgotten the words. Her desire was to rule—to issue commands as she had done as a child and to have her entire world obey.

  Amanda sighed as she recalled the memories and daydreams, longing to be part of a world she had only glimpsed. But now . . .

  The present intruded once more upon her visions of the past.
/>
  Her father was taking the dream away! Not only had he stopped sharing the dream he himself had awakened in her, but now he was trying to take it out of her hands, to make its fulfillment impossible.

  London! There was where great things happened!

  Her father had been there only yesterday. He had been at the very center of power in the middle of the Palace of Westminster, with a chance to become the most important man in all England. His picture would be in the London Times every day. But he was going to turn it down!

  What she wouldn’t give for such an opportunity herself! She could see it, feel it, taste the thrill of having a hand on the pulse of the great city.

  “Someday,” Amanda whispered, “you will be my home! It will not be so long from now. I will get away from this place where no one cares about me. I will get away . . . and then I will do what my father won’t!”

  He used to be such a great man—But she had grown older. Perhaps now she was finally seeing things more clearly. How childish she must have been to idolize him when she was young.

  Well, let her parents live their sedate country lives!

  Let her father work in the stupid garden and walk about the hillsides and through the village like a bumpkin. Let her mother drink tea and entertain other ladies even more uninteresting than she. Let George stay here at Heathersleigh all his life. Let Catharine marry and have ten children.

  She would make more of herself than any of them!

  One day the name Amanda Rutherford would be on the lips of every man and woman in England. They would all wish they could be like her!

  80

  Overheard Prayers

  That same evening, long after Amanda had retired to her room, a fit of restlessness seized her.

  She should not have yelled at her father and mother. She knew that—knew it as an abstract fact. Little sense of remorse accompanied the realization. I did wrong and should apologize for it, were not thoughts that entered her consciousness.

  Spontaneous apology had never burst forth from her lips in consequence of anything she had said or done. She had been forced upon occasion to utter the words I’m sorry. She always did so, however, through gritted teeth. Even the affair with Eunice had been carried out to ease her own guilt more than because she felt remorse for hurting the servant girl. Accompanying the words was always stubborn determination to yield to no softening of the heart following an extracted confession.

  Yet it could not be denied that she was uncomfortable because of the scene.

  She was, after all, a young lady of good breeding. She had been taught certain rules of decorum that were expected of a gentleman’s daughter, and she knew she had violated them. Amanda’s discomfort stemmed from having allowed herself to lose control and do what made her feel uncomfortable rather than from any behavior she would call wrong.

  With that aspect of her personality capable of doing wrong she had not yet become acquainted. Besides, she was still irritated with her parents for putting her in the awkward position in the first place.

  The whole thing was their fault, not hers. She told her father she hadn’t wanted to come down for breakfast. If he had not insisted, the entire scene would never have happened. She had likewise later asked to be excused from dinner. With that request Charles had complied. At teatime she had left after eating one small cake and sipping a fourth of a cup of tea.

  Amanda threw down the romance novel in which she had been halfheartedly trying to interest herself. She got up and paced about. A moment later she left her room with no particular destination in mind. She had no desire to see any of her family. It was too late to go outside. But she was not the least bit sleepy, and she couldn’t bear to stay cooped up in her room a minute longer. It was a few minutes before ten. The rest of the house was probably asleep by now anyway.

  Amanda made her way along the corridor with a vague idea of perhaps wandering to the library.

  She heard voices coming from her parents’ sitting room.

  She paused and waited. The door was ajar, and though the voices were soft, she could hear plainly enough. Her father’s voice was speaking.

  “ . . . make a way for us to help the boy, we pray, Lord. Be the Father to him Rune does not know how to be.”

  It was her own father, praying for Stirling Blakeley. “ . . . give us opportunity, Lord God. However invisible may be our hand, give us some tangible way to bring both father and son your love.”

  Tiptoeing, Amanda crept closer, hugging the wall, listening intently. She could tell by the tone of voice that they had stopped praying and were now talking in low tones.

  “ . . . don’t know what to do, Charles . . .” her mother was saying.

  “He will take care of her . . .”

  “She is so bent on her own way.”

  “That is true. Her self-will is strong. But the Lord will bring circumstances to force her to yield it by and by.”

  “I do not like to think what she may have to experience.”

  “Nor do I,” replied Charles. “But of one thing we can be certain—we have given her to him since the day of our new birth. How it may have been different had we begun earlier, who can say? But we did not discover the truth until she was seven. If we are responsible for that lack, then the Lord will deal with us accordingly. But now she is fourteen, and he must deal with her accordingly as well. He will not cease knocking at the stiff door of her anger, nor cease bringing events and opportunities upon her to make her recognize it.”

  Her parents fell silent.

  They’re talking about me! thought Amanda as mingled anger and disgust began to rise in her once more.

  Now they had started to pray again!

  “Father, again, as we so often have,” her father was saying, “we commit our dear Amanda into your hands. We seem powerless to get through to her about yielding her will to a higher purpose than her own desires. Forgive us the inconsistency of our own example. Help her to forgive us for the changes she did not understand. Accomplish your purpose, whatever it may take. Bring circumstances into her life that will . . .”

  Praying! thought Amanda. That’s all they ever did! But what good could that do Stirling Blakeley? What good would praying do if Father turned down being his party’s leader?

  She did not want them praying for her! And if they did, at least she didn’t have to listen to it!

  She turned and retreated silently along the corridor the way she had come.

  The sooner she got out of here and away from Heathersleigh, the better!

  81

  A New Century Accelerates Progress

  As the new century advanced, changes for both men and women arrived and established themselves in the fabric of daily existence. Which of them could truthfully be called progress would be for history to determine, for progress in the ways of the world and in the realm of the spirit are two very distinctive things.

  It was an age of technological advance far beyond even what nineteenth-century visionaries could have foreseen. Not only did motorcars rapidly replace horses as the preferred mode of personal transportation, now, as Sir Charles Rutherford had predicted, men also began to fly through the air. In every field from farming to communications, chemistry to astronomy, advances came at lightning speed. The human store of knowledge seemed to double every few years.

  With motorcars and aeroplanes, telephones and electricity, faster trains, larger factories, telescopes that gazed deep into the universe, microscopes that probed the intricacies of the atom, machines that could do most anything . . . what a time it was to be alive!

  Nor were men stretching their limits through invention alone.

  Trends begun in the previous century accelerated. The way people thought continued to change.

  Rationalists in all fields that probed the workings of the universe and human behavior left common sense behind altogether in their madcap pursuit of what they called truth. In fulfillment of Romans 1:22, they exalted their own small minds above him who had created re
ason and gifted it to them. Defying the very logic they deified, they thus cut off the source of their very power to think at all.

  The influence of Charles Darwin became ever more pervasive as his theory of evolution now became commonly accepted by more and more of the scientific community. Increasingly, Darwin’s zoological findings were illogically employed to bolster the notion that man’s life on the earth was the result of chance rather than divine design.

  At the same time, the influence of an Austrian physician named Sigmund Freud was spreading far beyond his native Vienna. Professor Freud’s institution of an entirely new method of inquiry into the human makeup called psychoanalysis also had the effect of widening yet further the schism between will and action and absolving men and women from responsibility for present wrong because of past influences perpetrated by others upon their inner psyches.

  The Viennese professor’s influence, more spiritually subtle than Darwin’s, was ultimately more dangerous as well . . . for his inquiries into the sources of human motivation opened wide the door man had only peeped through till then. Now at last could sin be thoroughly justified. In the Freudian scheme, personal accountability was swallowed up by the id, the ego, and the superego . . . and vanished from the human moral landscape. Increasingly, the thought patterns generated by Freudian thinking began to permeate the popular imagination.

  The influence of Karl Marx likewise deepened the lethal errors which were being committed against truth. Marx’s ideas, like those of Darwin and Freud, were destined to reshape the entire globe. The followers of the German founder of communism extended Darwin’s views to their illogical conclusion and maintained that God did not exist at all. Upon this foundation of sand were Marx’s disciples already envisioning a political system that represented the antithesis of the very equality they claimed to espouse.

  Twentieth-century modernist thinking—led by Darwin, Freud, and Marx and their thousands of protégés—thus challenged all previous concepts of right, wrong, justice, equality, and truth, in the same way that invention and industry was challenging the technological limits of what machines could do.