Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  “I say, Rutherford,” commented a friend of the father of the groom, “even the Tories you invited seem to be enjoying themselves!”

  “Nothing like getting out and mixing with people of the earth, I always say,” rejoined Charles’ father.

  At six o’clock, though none of the guests seemed yet inclined to leave, Charles and Jocelyn were whisked away by carriage to the train, which would bear them to Torquay.

  There they would honeymoon for two weeks at the seacoast resort before returning to the stately home where they would spend their married life together.

  ————

  “I’ll never forget that day either,” smiled Charles. “And though there have been a few bumps and changes in the road since then, my love for you has only grown deeper and stronger.”

  93

  Brother and Sister

  Catharine, come here!” cried George, at home on holiday from the first term of his new tenure at Oxford. He called to his sister as he ran down the first-floor corridor of Heathersleigh’s east wing.

  Fourteen-year-old Catharine jumped up from her chair and hurried from her room. She saw her twenty-year-old brother coming toward her.

  “I think I found what’s causing the spooky noises!” he exclaimed.

  He immediately turned. Catharine answered his cries and they hurried back the way he had come.

  “Is it really ghosts, George?” said Catharine, following closely on her brother’s heels.

  The slight tremor in her voice betrayed nervousness. She would have trusted George with her very life. But if he was going to show her some creepy old bones with cobwebs all over them—or something even worse . . . something that maybe wasn’t altogether dead yet!—she wasn’t sure she liked the idea.

  George glanced back with a smile and wink but said nothing further. Already they were climbing to the second floor. Within another minute they entered the library.

  George moved quickly across the floor to the movable bookcase he had discovered years before. In one motion he swung it aside. He lit a candle and then led the way into the darkened labyrinth of passageways behind the library wall.

  “George . . .”

  “I promise, Catharine,” he said, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  He took her hand, and she followed.

  George now led, more slowly, back eastward in the direction of the hidden tower staircase. He knew every inch of this passageway by now and could have negotiated the whole thing with his eyes closed. One level above them, the passage had been walled off from the rest of the garret. This fact had led to George’s original discovery of his great-grandfather’s shrewdly contrived maze. It was to this region of the house that Catharine expected George to take her. Instead, when they reached the tower, George turned in the opposite direction and began descending the hidden staircase which paralleled the one that held communication with the rest of the house.

  Down he led . . . down . . . down . . . until Catharine was certain they must be below the level of the ground outside. Not a word was spoken. At last they reached their destination, a small basement chamber which George had also discovered some years earlier.

  A brief explanation followed.

  “I don’t see what this has to do with the ghosts,” said Catharine after George had revealed the basement portion of today’s discovery.

  “You will after I show you what I found in the garret. Come on.”

  He turned and led her back up the way they had come. In three or four minutes they had arrived in the upper portions of the Hall. Then George proceeded to explain his findings, patiently pausing for her many questions and explanations.

  “You see, the wind coming up from the cold basement all the way to the top of the house into the garret—that’s what causes the noises.”

  “It’s too bad Amanda isn’t here to see this,” said Catharine at length, sitting down in the semidarkness of the confined space.

  “She wouldn’t be interested, anyway,” replied George, joining her on the floor. He set the candle down beside him. The flame danced and flickered about, casting eerie shadows that made Catharine glance around uneasily. George might explain everything to the perfect satisfaction of his rational mind. But it was still spooky here.

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “But I still don’t understand why Amanda became so stuffy. Even before she left, she’d hardly smiled at me in years, and she never wanted to have fun with us.”

  “I don’t understand it either. We used to have such fun playing together.”

  “She was always telling me what to do, since before I could remember.”

  “She ordered me about too.”

  “But you’re a boy—and you’re older than her, too!”

  “What difference did that make? That never stopped Amanda. She even told Mother and Father what to do.”

  “You never treated me like that, even when I was little. Why did she?”

  “That’s just the way Amanda was.”

  Brother and sister sat for a while in the candlelit darkness. Thoughts of Amanda caused both to grow pensive. Their sister’s leaving had affected them too, though each in different ways.

  “Why is Amanda the way she is, George?” asked Catharine at length.

  “She wanted to grow up too fast,” her brother replied. “That’s how it seemed to me at least. I enjoyed being young. I still do. I don’t feel at all as if I’m twenty.”

  “You always seemed like a grown-up to me.”

  George laughed. “That’s only because I am older. But I feel just as much like a boy as ever. It seems to me that you and I are practically the same age.”

  “So why did Amanda want to grow up too fast?”

  “I thought all girls were in a hurry to grow up. Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t care about being seventeen and wearing fancy dresses and going to balls in London.”

  “I can’t see you doing it either!” laughed George again. “Can you imagine you and me going to some society thing—you in a gown, me in tails and a top hat!”

  Now they both laughed.

  “We’d probably stand out like two country bumpkins,” added George. “I don’t know about you, but I love the country—I miss it the whole time I’m at university. I wouldn’t trade Heathersleigh for anything. I don’t see why Amanda was so stuck on London.”

  “I never want to leave Heathersleigh,” said Catharine. “I like being fourteen too. It’s a little like being halfway between a girl and a woman. I don’t want my life to change any faster than it should. I want to enjoy every age as much as I can.”

  “Amanda sure didn’t feel that way. I can’t imagine why she hated it here so much.”

  “I sure wouldn’t want to be without Mum or Papa.”

  “Me neither. I never understood why Amanda became so annoyed with them.”

  “She once said to me that they were trying to control everything she did.”

  “She said that to me too. But I didn’t know what she was talking about. Mother and Father give us plenty of freedom, don’t you think?”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Except of course, I’ve never been that interested in all the things Amanda wanted to do . . . like go to London or march with the suffragettes.”

  “I must say,” he added, “I’m worried about Amanda.”

  “I really love her.”

  “So do I,” George replied, then looked up with a sad smile. “After she got to be older,” he went on, “she always thought everyone was against her. But really we all love her. But when she was seeing things so mixed up, how could she realize it?”

  “Let’s pray for her, George.”

  “Good idea.”

  A deep silence fell. A presence was indeed with these two young people who were in the process of making their parents’ faith their own and thus passing it afresh down into new generations of the ancient family. It was not, however, a ghost of some ancestor who was with them at this moment, but the Spirit of th
eir Father.

  “God, we pray for Amanda,” said George at length. “Make her want to be part of our family again. Show her down deep that we all love her. Help her not to be too foolish while she’s in London. I’m sorry if I wasn’t always as good a brother to her as I should have been. And help Amanda someday to look inside herself, to see that she’s got some problems she must face if she’s ever to have a happy life.”

  “Help Amanda not to be so angry at Mum and Papa because of what they believe,” now prayed Catharine. “And help her not to be angry at us either, if she is. Help her know that we love her. We do still love her, especially now that she’s gone. Take care of Amanda, Lord. Be with her even if she doesn’t know it. Don’t let anything bad happen to her in London. Amen.”

  “Amen,” added George.

  As they fell silent, they heard footsteps approaching from the stairway below. A second or two later, light from a second candle began to flicker toward them.

  “I thought I heard voices,” came a familiar voice. The next instant Jocelyn’s face appeared.

  “Hallo, Mum!” said Catharine. “How’d you find us?”

  “I came into the library for a book, and there was the bookcase pulled back. I poked my head in to investigate, heard the two of you, and decided to have a little adventure of my own by following you. What are you doing?”

  “Well, first we were talking about ghosts, and then we were praying for Amanda.”

  “That’s wonderful. I know that pleases the Lord. It pleases me too.”

  She sat down between them, placed her candle holder next to George’s on the floor, and took each of their hands. “You know,” she said, “the two of you really mean a lot to your father and me—you know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course we do, Mother,” replied George.

  “When something like this happens—with Amanda, I mean—of course it hurts us as parents. But our grief over Amanda doesn’t mean we aren’t more thankful for you than you can realize.”

  She squeezed their hands and smiled sincerely at them both.

  “Whatever Amanda might say, we believe in you and Papa,” said Catharine. “You’re the two most wonderful people in the world to us. Aren’t they, George?”

  “I couldn’t have said it better,” replied her brother.

  “Catharine . . . thank you!” said Jocelyn. She leaned over and embraced her daughter affectionately. When she drew away, tears were falling from her eyes. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.—Thank you, too, George,” she added, turning and giving her son a hug. “You both have really helped your father and me to endure this time of sadness.”

  It was silent for a few minutes, and they all sat quietly together, watching the candle shadows flicker. Now, with her mother present, the little room seemed warm and cozy to Catharine, not spooky at all.

  “I know that in one way Amanda hasn’t done anything so very dreadful,” said Jocelyn. “You may wonder why her leaving has caused your father and me such grief. It isn’t as though she has committed a crime or has done something that society would count so terribly wicked. Have you wondered about that?”

  “I don’t know, Mother—not really,” replied George. “I think what Amanda did is pretty awful. The things she said to you are unforgivable, especially after all you’ve done for her.”

  Jocelyn nodded.

  “We do forgive her, of course,” she said. “Or we are trying. But what she has done is very serious, even though she may still appear perfectly respectable on the outside. And the worst of it, of course, is not what she has done to us, but what she has done to God. Rebellion of the heart, even though it sometimes remains invisible, is the worst sin a human being can commit against God. Seeing our own daughter do so is more painful than it is possible to say.”

  Again the comfortable silence fell for a time before Jocelyn went on. “You know, it could be one of you, or both of you, who will be the ones to help Amanda come to her senses.”

  “How could we do that for her?” asked Catharine.

  “I don’t know. But if you pray for her and ask God for an opportunity to show that you love her and believe in her—not in what she may have done, but in the person she could be—and to tell her that you believe in us and trust us, and God too, then you never know what God might be able to do.”

  “Do you really think Amanda might come to one of us first?” asked George.

  “Right now her heart is closed to your father and me. But I know she loves the two of you. Her heart may open back to one of you before it does to us.”

  “That doesn’t seem very likely,” said Catharine.

  “Don’t lose patience with her,” said Jocelyn. “Try to keep a forgiving heart. I know she’s hurt you in the past, and she has said and done cruel things. I know you share our hurt over her leaving. But you must keep praying for her. Then wait for whatever opportunity the Lord gives. You never know how those heart-doors will open. Your father opened doors for me that I didn’t even know I’d shut.”

  “What kind of doors, Mum?” said Catharine.

  “Doors down inside myself, doors of doubt, of guilt—and places, too, where I was holding back, refusing to grow in areas he knew I needed to grow. If it hadn’t been for your father, I wouldn’t be as close to God as I am.”

  “How did Papa do that?”

  “He believed in me. And he prayed for me. It helped me to see things I’d never seen about myself. And he still does that when I’m struggling. I do it for him, too.”

  “I guess . . . I never really thought of you and Papa having to struggle with God.”

  Jocelyn’s face held a tinge of sadness. “Oh, my dear, of course we struggle. It’s not always easy to be God’s people.”

  Mother and son and daughter sat in the stillness of the garret talking for another hour. Never had the three of them felt so close. Catharine and George seemed somehow old enough, perhaps for the first time, to know and understand their mother not merely as their mother, but as a fellow human being engaged in the universal struggle to know herself. Seeing that side of her made them love and admire her all the more.

  “Oops! There goes my candle,” exclaimed George, as the fading wick finally gave up the ghost and became a thin trail of dying white smoke.

  “Then mine isn’t far behind!” said Jocelyn.

  They rose then, and returned to the library.

  94

  Unknown Connections

  Charles Rutherford sat down to peruse the morning edition of the Times. Some five or ten minutes later an announcement on page four caught his attention.

  “I say, Jocelyn,” he said, “it seems old Lord Halifax died yesterday.”

  “I don’t think I know the name,” she replied.

  “Burton Wyckham Halifax—been a stalwart in the House of Lords as long as I can remember. Though I understand he’s been slowing down for years. He and my father were somewhat close, actually. Politically and professionally, I mean. Can’t say I ever recall seeing Lord Halifax here at Heathersleigh for a visit.”

  “When are services?”

  Charles scanned further down the page.

  “In three days,” he said.

  “Will you go?” asked Jocelyn.

  “I don’t know,” mused Charles. “I must admit I haven’t thought of the old fellow in years. But perhaps I should.”

  “Do you know his widow?”

  “No. Lady Halifax—his first wife—died years ago. I heard he’d remarried years back, when I was still in the Commons—a year or two after the Diamond Jubilee, as I recall. A widow from the Continent, I believe. I never knew her.—Curious,” he added thoughtfully, “the paper makes no mention of her.”

  ————

  Meanwhile in London, the widow of whom Charles spoke was at that moment engaged in conversation with her son, now twenty-four years of age, concerning a future that would in time draw the two families together in ways the Rutherfords of Devon could never have foreseen.
Their tones were thoughtful and subdued, though they would hardly be considered those of mourning.

  “Now that your stepfather is gone,” the lady was saying, “it may be time to reassess your plans.”

  “I am content with my position at the Mail.”

  “The Daily Mail is hardly worthy of you, nor is it why I sent you to Cambridge,” rejoined Lady Halifax.

  “Journalism offers its opportunities, Mother. I am able to travel widely. That is something I am not eager to relinquish.”

  The woman nodded. She knew far more about the nature of her son’s travels than he realized, but was content that such knowledge remain private for the present. The time would come for disclosure. Perhaps one day she and her son would even work side by side for the cause. But the boy was still young. He had to be handled carefully as events on the Continent developed. In the meantime, it would be useful to explore more actively what infiltrations on this side of the Channel might be open to such a wealthy and eligible young man.

  Both had more to consider than they were willing to let on. For this mother and son were involved in a game where secrecy and information were the commodities to be bought and sold and where one’s allegiances were best kept fluid . . . and to oneself.

  Nor were they the only sleepers in England who yet remained in their hidden slumber. The time for the revealing of this clandestine network would come. Before that, it would draw many unsuspecting English men and women into the webs of their schemes of deceit. But the full story of how such as these would change Europe’s future, and in the process that of the Rutherfords of Devon, lay yet ahead to be told.

  All would come to light . . . but not until its appointed time.

  95

  Privilege of the Prodigal’s Parent

  The tears at Heathersleigh gradually lessened. Over the months, Charles and Jocelyn took hope on behalf of their daughter and began the long process of covering her with prayer.

  One weekend far into the fall, Timothy Diggorsfeld came from London for a visit. Since Amanda’s departure he had tried to get down to Devon as often as was practically possible to reassure his dear friends. He knew both had searched long and hard within themselves to find whatever responsibility lay upon their own shoulders—willing even in their grief to spare their daughter.