Heathersleigh Homecoming

by Michael Phillips

  How could she have been so enamored by such ambitions?

  They were so false, so empty, and had proved so unsatisfying. How could her youthful spirit have been so consumed by what she now saw was meaningless?

  A great metamorphosis had taken place over the course of those eight years, though it had required heartbreak and pain to bring it about. The change was simply this: She now wanted to be rather than to do.

  At last she wanted to be a person of worth and character. Who she was inside finally mattered. It had never mattered before. Suddenly it became the only thing she cared about.

  As earlier ambitions fell away like scales from her eyes, their absence allowed her to perceive many things anew—truths that had always been there but that she had never seen aright.

  Chief among these was the realization that character had been the missing ingredient in her own life, a fact which had blinded her to the deep qualities of character that were present in her father and mother. It was a startling and humbling new revelation.

  After Monday’s lunch, Jocelyn wandered to the front door, then went out.

  It was the first time she had crossed the threshold of the door in two days. The sun felt good on her face. She drew in a deep breath of air. It felt quietly and sadly invigorating to fill her lungs again.

  She must go on with her life, she thought . . . for Catharine, for the household, for the villagers. Somehow . . . she must carry on.

  She sauntered slowly away from the house. Before many minutes had gone by she found herself unconsciously approaching the heather garden. She would not have chosen to come here by herself, not now, not after what had happened. Yet as she began wandering its quiet and lonely paths, a strange sense of communion with Charles enveloped her.

  Maggie had risen while the day was still early and had gone out.

  The air was still. She felt a hush that was more than the mere absence of wind. It was the hush of expectancy.

  The peculiar sensation remained with her throughout the morning. And now, as the sun rose high in the sky, and as she worked in her garden, sprouting and blooming gloriously to spring-life again, she glanced about every so often as if unconsciously expecting to look up and see a visitor approaching.

  Indeed, Maggie’s inner instincts were so finely tuned from years spent listening to the Master’s still small voice that she now perceived the silent invisible awakening of a human-garden of which her own was but a passing earthly shadow.

  She continued to pull a few weeds, cultivate the soft earth, and plant a few annuals . . . but her mind was elsewhere.

  On Amanda’s journey toward home, years continued to fall away, and image after image of her father came into her mind.

  They were painful now to recall, but she did not resist their flow. Happy images of his exuberance, his compassion, his humor, his energy, his laughter, his wit, his intelligence, his constant attempt to teach her and George and Catharine and make them think, his persistent upward pull of their thoughts toward self-discovery and truth, and most of all his determination to walk as God’s man whatever it might cost.

  Every memory was suddenly happy and so full of life.

  Where had these memories been for eight years!

  How could she have forgotten what he was like? Suddenly everything seemed so plain.

  Tears filled Jocelyn’s eyes as she went slowly through the garden she and Charles had worked in and expanded together, and where they had spent so many hours praying. They were tears of the heartbreaking loss of a faithful companion, a true man, and all a woman could hope for in a friend.

  Yet, too, they were now becoming tears of dawning readiness to face the tragedy and look forward again. As she went she began talking with Charles, as if he were still beside her, remembering many fond times they had spent here together.

  “I miss you so much, Charles,” she whispered, “but I will try to be strong and brave. I know that is what you would tell me . . . that God’s love, and even yours, will outlive this present agony.

  “I can almost hear you saying the words,” she said, smiling thinly. “I can hardly bear it, knowing I will not see your face again . . . but I will try to smile and be thankful . . . for your sake. Oh, my dear, dear Charles . . . you were so good to me. I love you so much!”

  Her heart fell silent.

  There were too many words. There were no words.

  Amanda’s memories of Charles’ happy, smiling face brought many tears, and an anguished renewal of the terrible grief of a daughter who has at last discovered her father but knows she will never see him again.

  She let the tears flow. A catharsis was under way, and she knew she must yield to it.

  She recalled incidents she hadn’t thought of in years. Suddenly her father, in some strange and heartbreakingly wonderful way, was closer to her than he had ever been, closer than when they had sat side by side traveling along this very track to London when she was seven and her father was about to be knighted by Queen Victoria—closer because for the first time in her life he lived fondly in her heart.

  At last she realized how deeply he had loved her. And for the first time his love became something to cherish.

  Allowing that love mysteriously to wrap its arms around her brought a new flood of tears. Yet in a mysterious way they were cleansing and healing tears. For they also brought with them the realization that she now loved him too.

  In the heather garden Jocelyn began to feel similar fluttering sensations that had all day been afflicting Maggie.

  She heard the train coming. She paused to listen, glancing down the hill. She could see the smoke from its engine puffing up in white clouds through the trees. It crossed the bridge across the river, then continued on toward the village.

  She turned along one of the winding pathways and left the garden, crossed the lawn, then felt herself drawn to the driveway coming up the hill to the house.

  She wandered toward the drive, unconsciously peering down it. All was quiet again as the clacking sounds gradually died away in the distance.

  Why was her heart beating so?

  The train was now slowing. Amanda knew they were at last coming into the station at Milverscombe. She had forced herself not to look out as the train crossed the bridge. She was not quite ready to see the house yet.

  She wanted to hold a moment longer the realization that she truly loved her father.

  And with the transformation in her heart of recognizing that simple truth that had evaded her for so long, Amanda Rutherford was a prodigal no longer.

  She was at last ready to love both her fathers, to accept their love unconditionally, to learn from them, and to become the daughter she had never been content to be.

  “Daddy,” she whispered, “I am so sorry!”

  It was all she could say.

  The train continued to slow.

  “One day I will ask you to forgive me,” she went on silently. “Until then I have to content myself knowing that you always forgave me, even when I thought I hated you. You always forgave, because your heart was so full of love. I am so sorry I could not see it. But I see it now.”

  And thus, as Timothy had foretold, Amanda had already begun to learn from the memory of her father’s life. And so did the spirit of Charles Rutherford’s character, through his death, begin to come to life within the heart of his daughter.

  109

  Heathersleigh Homecoming

  From the drive, Jocelyn turned again toward the heather garden, though she now walked in a wide semicircle around it and down the gentle, grassy slope toward the road where it bent away from the river and continued toward Milverscombe. Through the thin trees she approached close to the road.

  A sound came into her hearing. She peered down the hill through the wooded embankment toward the road. It was a carriage.

  It was . . . coming this way!

  Why was her heart beating . . . why was she afraid to look?

  But she must look!

  Jocelyn waited where
she stood among the trees. The carriage came closer, now passing in front of her at a distance of about thirty yards.

  A single horse . . . a driver . . . and sitting inside the enclosed passenger coach—

  Had her eyes deceived her!

  It couldn’t . . . but—

  “Oh, Lord . . . Lord . . .”

  Already Jocelyn had turned and was hurrying out of the trees and back up the hill to the house, forgetting her light-headedness, forgetting her grief, and forgetting her weariness altogether . . . running as she hadn’t run in forty years.

  As the carriage rolled up the drive to the great Hall of her childhood, all was now changed for Amanda. She would turn twenty-five years old a few weeks from now. At long last, youth tumbled away behind her.

  At last she was eager to be here. It was finally time to put away childish things.

  She drew in a deep breath, of both courage and resolve, and looked out upon the familiar landscape that was at once unchanged, and yet entirely transformed to her new-seeing eyes.

  Standing at an upstairs window, Catharine Rutherford was staring absently down the road, wiping away a fresh set of tears, when first she glimpsed the distant approach of a carriage coming up the drive toward the house.

  And there was her mother running almost frantically from somewhere out by the heather garden.

  Catharine’s heart skipped a beat.

  Could it possibly—

  She did not wait any longer to answer her own question than had her mother.

  Already she was bolting for the stairs and bounding down them two at a time.

  Before Amanda reached the Hall, she saw her mother running from beside the house and across the front courtyard. A great smile was spread over her face. Tears flowed down both cheeks in a glistening stream.

  “Stop,” cried Amanda to the driver.

  She jumped out of the carriage before it had come to a stop and broke into a run toward the outstretched arms, crying like a baby.

  Mother and daughter fell into each other’s arms somewhere between carriage and house.

  Amanda broke down and wept convulsively, her shoulders shaking in great heaving sobs. All former reticence was gone. She melted in Jocelyn’s embrace and was at last content in her mother’s love.

  Catharine burst out the front door, then suddenly stopped.

  The sight of mother and sister before her, standing in the middle of the courtyard tightly holding one another in their arms, each weeping on the other’s shoulder, was too wondrous to intrude upon.

  Catharine stood waiting in silence.

  “Oh, God . . . God . . . thank you!” she said quietly through the smiling, weepy heaving of her heart.

  She forced her eyes away. It was too holy an exchange even for a sister to gaze long upon, a moment reserved for mother and daughter alone.

  Jocelyn could not prevent a new rush of grief from loss of husband and son. But suddenly to have the daughter who was lost melt into her arms caused more emotions in her mother’s soul than she could contain.

  “Oh, Amanda,” she whispered at length, “it is good to see you. I love you so much.”

  “I know, Mother . . . finally I really know. I love you too. I am so sorry!”

  Jocelyn held her tight, comforting the daughter who again became as a little girl. She had not allowed herself to dream this moment would ever come. Now that it had, she thought she could stand holding her precious daughter forever.

  How long they stood, whether minutes or seconds, neither knew.

  After a long silence, Jocelyn tried to speak. “Oh, dear . . . dear Amanda . . . your father—”

  Her voice broke in a choke.

  “I know, Mother . . .” whispered Amanda, “I know.”

  Again it was quiet. Gradually they parted.

  Catharine now ran to join them, and the embrace and tears were renewed. When such heights of joy intermingled with such depths of grief, there was nothing to do but weep.

  Mother and daughters began walking toward the entry of the house.

  The carriage had pulled in front of the door and the driver was now unloading Amanda’s things. There were only two or three boxes besides two suitcases, containing the few things she had stored with the Pankhursts and at Cousin Martha’s which Timothy had retrieved for her before putting her on the train that same morning. It was obviously more than a mere visit of a day or two would account for.

  “But . . . but what are those boxes,” said Jocelyn, “and what is that man about?”

  “It’s everything I have, Mother,” replied Amanda. “I’ve come home this time to stay. That is . . . if I may.”

  “Oh, Amanda,” exclaimed her mother, “Catharine and I are so glad to have you back. Now more than ever. This has always been your home.”

  “I know, Mother,” replied Amanda. “I think at last I finally realize that this has been my home all along.”

  110

  Glimmers

  It was not until some time had passed, and they were having tea together, that the subject of Bobby arose. Now for the first time did Amanda become aware that there was yet a third beloved Heathersleigh man she would never see again. The realization stung her heart anew and deepened her grief that she had delayed her homecoming so long. In the midst of fresh tears, Amanda thought of Maggie, and knew she must see her without delay.

  In less than thirty minutes the three Rutherford women were on their way to the cottage for a visit.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t widened this path to Maggie’s so a car could make the drive,” said Amanda as they rode along the well-worn carriage track.

  “Actually,” replied Jocelyn, “your father considered that very thing.” She paused, and the quiet was broken only by the steady clomp-clomp-clomp of the single horse ahead of them. “But he decided it would take something away from the wood and the setting of the cottage by assaulting it with the disruptive sounds and smells of an automobile.”

  Having no idea they were on their way to see her, Maggie, meanwhile, was on her knees in the middle of her garden. As if stimulated yet the more by Amanda’s homecoming, though she yet knew nothing of it, her earlier agitation had heightened as the day progressed. Her thoughts had come to gather about a time several months earlier when she had risen from a sound sleep with her Bobby’s words about a hidden legacy in her brain, and now in her mind she relived the discovery she had made that night.

  ————

  Whether Maggie had read every word in this Bible was doubtful. Some of the law and history books of the Old Testament had never infected her with particular interest. Theologians might find meaning in the lists of names and tassels and cords on the tabernacle, parbars westward or killings of bulls for the altar. Her interests had always been along more practical lines.

  But of one thing she was sure—she had read every word of the New Testament. And the Gospels more times than she could count. She had pored over every word of them, especially the words from the mouth of the Savior himself. And now on this night she paused again here, as she had many times, in the eleventh chapter of Mark’s Gospel to ponder the words underlined by her grandmother, in the Bible her own mother, Maggie’s great-grandmother, had given her.

  “To you is given to understand the mystery of the kingdom. . . .”

  There were the words, faint now with the passing of years, added in the margin in her grandmother’s own hand—words as familiar to her as this Bible itself. She had seen the brief note most of her life, thinking it merely a reference to the importance of the verse. She had tried to impress that importance on young Amanda one time long ago right here in this very cottage whose origins and history were now on her mind.

  She read the words over again, then a third time, puzzling over the strange handwritten annotation.

  There is a mystery, her grandmother had written in the margin, and the key is closer than you think. The key . . . the key . . . find the key and unlock the mystery.

  Suddenly the words jumpe
d out at Maggie with new meaning she had never seen.

  Might this mean what she was now thinking! Was the late hour and silence of the night playing tricks on her brain!

  A key!

  How could she not have made the connection before now?

  There was a small, old, peculiar key that had been kicking around her entire life in the drawer of the secretary. No one knew what it was for.

  Could its purpose be connected to her grandmother’s words!

  Below the note had been added another reference, even tinier. All it said was “Genesis 25:31–33.”

  Why had she not investigated it before? thought Maggie.

  What did it matter—she would do so now!

  Quickly she flipped back to the halfway point of the sacred volume’s first book, scanned down the heavily underlined and annotated page, which also must have been among her grandmother’s favorites, judging from the use the text had received. Her eyes stopped on the thirty-first verse.

  “And Jacob said,” she read, “Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.”

  What could it mean? thought Maggie.

  What birthright?

  What had her grandmother been trying to convey? Were her marginal notes a cryptic message to someone in the future about this key . . . a mystery . . . a birthright?

  Who were Jacob and Esau?

  Again Maggie flipped back to the Gospel of Mark. There were the strange words again.

  Find the key and unlock the mystery . . . Genesis 25:31–33

  Suddenly her mind began racing feverishly.

  Could what had just occurred to her really be possible?

  The key . . . the mystery . . . the sale of the birthright.

  The fantastic thought was so incredible that for a moment she sat reeling in disbelief.

  Maggie rose, set her Bible aside, and walked to the ancient secretary, built, as her mother had told her, by her grandfather, Maggie’s own great-grandfather. As she approached, she eyed it with eyes alive to sudden new possibilities.