© 2001 by Michael R. Phillips
Published by Bethany House Publishers
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Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2957-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover illustration © Erin Dertner / Exclusively represented by Applejack Licensing
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Prologue: The Secrets of Heathersleigh Hall
Clandestine Discovery
Origins
Season of Secrets
A Bishop’s Restitution
Hints and Clues
Maggie’s Revelations
Part I: Summer 1915
1. A Time to Remember
2. The London Rutherfords
3. Heathersleigh Cottage
4. A Little Girl Named Chelsea
5. Hector’s Surprise
6. Bath and Breakfast
7. Rollo Black
8. A Drive to the Coast
9. Layers of Self-Insight
10. Visitor to the Parsonage
11. Invisible Scratches of Character
12. What Might God Do vs. What Won’t He Do
13. The Most Difficult Forgiveness
14. For God So Loved the World
15. Surprise Visitor
16. Name Out of the Past
17. Difficult Thoughts About the Future
18. Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz
19. The Garret
20. Difficult Options
21. The Secret Room
22. How Far Should Accountability Go?
Part II: Autumn 1915
23. Something Is at Hand
24. To London
25. A Garden of Dormant Seeds
26. Light Goes Out of the Fountain
27. Timothy’s Counsel
28. Hang On to the Lifeline—God Is Good
29. Thoughtful Return
30. The Greater Victory
31. Be a Good Girl
Part III: Spring 1916
32. A Letter
33. A Fall
34. I Want to Be Good Like Daddy Said
35. Secret Garden-Room of the Heart
36. Another Key
37. Discovery
38. Preparations
39. Visitor From Switzerland
40. Preservation of the Doctrine
41. Good Will Be Called Evil
42. Souls at Risk
43. The Passion to Forgive
44. The Dreaded Word
45. The Mother and the Motherless
46. Betsy and Sister Hope
47. Inquisition
48. I Believe
49. Refuge
50. Do Your Will, Lord
51. Departure
Part IV: Spring–Fall 1916
52. Embedded Message
53. Deciphering the Clues
54. Culmination
55. Letter Home
56. Amanda’s Unwelcome Proposal
57. Argument
58. Two Visitors
59. Hope’s Return
60. Mediterranean Coast
61. Happy Departure
62. Shootout at Sea
63. A Caller
64. Temporary Lodgings
65. Revelation in Hyde Park
66. New Resident in Milverscombe
67. News and No News
68. Impromptu Meeting
69. Christmas 1916
70. Telegram
71. Shock
Part V: 1917
72. New Perspective
73. The Hall and the Cottage
74. More News
75. Summer 1917
76. Stroke
Part VI: 1918–1919
77. Farewell
78. In the Chicken Shed
79. Dreams
80. The Prayer Wood
81. New Bank and the Stable Roof
82. How Can I Forgive Myself?
83. Impromptu Delivery
84. The Banker and the Client
85. The Banker and His Thoughts
86. Excitement in Milverscombe
87. Changes
Part VII: 1920–1923
88. End of a Tumultuous Decade
89. Private Talk
90. Another Private Talk
91. Storm Clouds
92. Decline
93. Farewell
94. Geoffrey and Timothy
95. End of the Fight
96. Stratagems
97. Thirty-Day Call
98. The Will
99. Deliverance
100. More Stratagems
101. Payoff
102. An Offer
103. Loving Admonition
104. Closing of the Circle
105. Joining of the Two
106. A Christmas Trip
107. A Young Crusoe
Epilogue
Ideas in Fiction
The Rutherford Family Lineage
About the Author
Fiction by Michael Phillips
Introduction
Reconciliation—The Highest Truth
This series of books you have been reading has many themes. But mostly it is a story of reconciliation.
I did not intentionally set out to write about reconciliation. But perhaps because I believe that reconciliation is God’s ultimate purpose in the universe, and that such is the ultimate destiny and climax of every human drama, such a theme simply emerged as the Heathersleigh story unfolded.
All stories and all lives must tell the story of reconciliation if they are to accurately reflect the human condition and the highest truth in the universe. That high truth is simply this, that God will make all things right in the end.
However, during our brief sojourn on the earth, we each are called to live out incomplete portions of that great story. Most human lives contain heartbreak. We live in a fallen world. We are sinners who are rebellious and stubborn and independent of heart. Therefore, it is occasionally difficult not to rant against God for the bitterness of our lot. I must confess myself guilty as well. But we only do so because we lose sight of the fact that we occupy but one tiny role in that universal story whose glorious ending is yet to be told.
That ending is reconciliation, restitution, healing. God is good, and I repeat: He will make all things right in the end.
Foundational and intrinsic in reconciliation—between ourselves and God, and ourselves and others—is forgiveness. There can be no healing without forgiveness. Therefore, any story of reconciliation must of necessity also be a story of forgiveness. God is ever sending his forgiveness in pursuit of us in our waywardness, that he might bring us back into the fold of his eternal family—restored, forgiven, and whole. For such a purpose did he send his Son Jesus Christ to die and make atonement for our sins�
�to send his love and forgiveness into our midst, to reclaim his creation and bring it home.
Accepting this divine forgiveness, however, as important as it is to salvation, is often only the beginning of healing. As we struggle to incorporate forgiveness into our daily lives, learning to forgive ourselves is one of the most difficult aspects of the cross to appropriate in a practical way. We may not face exactly the same struggles that confront Amanda Rutherford. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, I think most of us will admit to great difficulty in bringing forgiveness all the way inside.
But Amanda’s life demonstrates that it is never too late to accept God’s forgiveness, to forgive oneself, and then to pray for a restoration of the years the locusts have eaten.
God is in the business of working personal, private, invisible miracles of healing and restoration. More than any other of his magnificent works in the universe, this is what God does:
He heals hearts.
He fixes human brokenness.
He brings sons and daughters back to their fathers.
He restores.
He makes whole.
He sends his forgiveness after his wayward, hurting, broken, lonely children, like a probe of light, to pierce deep into those private regions of anguish and hopelessness that have been covered over for years. He says, “My child . . . I love you, I understand, I not only forgive the world of its sins through my Son, I forgive you. Now you can also forgive those who have hurt you, because I forgive them . . . and you can forgive yourself. Rise up and be my child—be whole, be clean, be restored, and walk in forgiveness.”
It is never too late to have a happy childhood, though the pain may have stolen its memories from you for a time, or your own wrong attitudes may have caused you to lose sight of them along the way. It is never too late, because the probing miracle-working spade of divine forgiveness can go back and retill the soil of memory and bring new life to long buried flowers within the garden of your soul, whose pleasant fragrance can fill your later years with sweetness no matter what may have come before.
It may surprise you when I say that one of the characters I find most intriguing in this entire series is Bishop Arthur Crompton.
He was originally but a minor character whose role in my author’s brain never extended beyond that of a brief walk-on appearance. He wasn’t supposed to get under my skin. But he did. And I found my heart growing very tender toward him—sin and false motives and hypocrisy and all—as he aged, and as he began looking inward.
Don’t you suppose this is how God looks at us—tenderly, in the midst of our foolishness, our hypocrisy, our selfish motives, and our sin—gently speaking through conscience, through circumstances, through the maturity that the years gradually bring, quietly waiting for us to begin asking the right kinds of questions about what our lives have been about. And when we do, he is there as our own loving Father to accept our humble regrets, to listen to the quiet prayers no one else in all the world hears, and do what he can to make sons and daughters of us, even though our years living for self be many, and our years obeying his voice be few.
As I myself grew tender toward Bishop Crompton, it opened a new window of understanding toward God’s love for me, and for all men.
Arthur Crompton, therefore, though a minor character, typifies this reconciliatory work of the heavenly Father in the lives of his children—a man gone wrong, a man who gave lip service to the service of God for most of his life, but a man whose heart was finally softened in the end by the incessant wooing of his Father’s loving, tender, forgiving, restoring voice.
With regard to the criticism certain to result from Timothy Diggorsfeld’s discussion with his church leaders, I would emphasize again, as I did in the introduction to Wild Grows the Heather in Devon, that Timothy Diggorsfeld’s ideas represent a historical point of view commonly held in the late nineteenth century. I hope you will be able to read this as an accurate slice of perspective into the church of one hundred years ago without wrongly assuming an attempt on this author’s part to promote a controversial doctrine. I happen to find it interesting to explore the various issues which concerned the Church of that time. Whether or not one personally embraces Diggorsfeld’s views is far less important in my opinion than that we follow his example of not being afraid to ask what our loving Father might do. I hope the same will always be said of me, irrespective of whether I happen to agree with all his conclusions.
If you are interested in my own personal feelings on the matter in more detail, I refer you to the postscript at the end of this book.
Michael Phillips
Clandestine Discovery
1762
A thick mist blanketed the southern coast of Devon.
It was exactly this kind of night smugglers hoped for—to land, unload their goods, and escape back into the south channel without detection. Being caught meant the gallows. It was worth waiting for the fog.
Two daring lads crouched on a high bluff gazing down toward the rocky water’s edge, well bundled and anticipating what adventure the night might bring. Whether they were afraid, neither would admit to the other. Bravado and daring formed the creed of such youth.
Both bore names of distinction in southwest England. But their fathers’ reputations provided few thrills. Discovering the identity of the fabled smuggler known as the Devonshire Bandit, and who his accomplices onshore might be, offered a challenge they could not resist. What they would do with the information neither had paused to ask. That there was a secret to be discovered, knowledge of which was accompanied by no little danger, was incentive enough to stir the blood of any teen boy.
The sixteen-year-old was a Rutherford of Heathersleigh. His eighteen-year-old companion, and the chief instigator of the clandestine plot, was a Powell of Holsworthy.
They had arrived two hours before and by now were shivering in the night chill.
“I’ve had enough,” said young Rutherford in exasperation. “We’ve got the wrong spot. There’s nobody within miles of here but the gulls.”
He rose and took several steps inland in the direction they had come. As he did he began raising the wick of his lantern.
“Wait—I think I see something!” whispered Powell. “Douse that light.”
Rutherford quickly turned the lantern down and knelt again at his companion’s side squinting into the fog.
“A ship is coming,” said Powell. “I hear creaking, and water splashing against wood. Hand me the glass.”
He took it, put the telescope to his eye, and peered through the fog.
“Too dark and misty,” he said. “I can’t make out a thing.”
“Let’s climb down for a closer look.”
Leaving telescope and lanterns out of sight where they were, they rose and carefully scrambled over the rocky incline, being careful to send no stones tumbling ahead of them into the water giving warning of their approach. Halfway down they paused, listening through the night.
“I hear something too,” whispered Rutherford. “Was that a voice?”
“Sounded like it.”
“Can you see anything?”
“Not yet. We’ve got to get lower.”
“How deep is the water here?”
“Deep. And it’s high tide—they’ll come all the way to shore. They say the Spanish landed spies in this cove two hundred years ago during Drake’s time.”
Again they began climbing down. Gruff voices could be heard, muted through the fog, but unmistakable now.
Suddenly the huge ghostly outline of a ship’s prow, masts reaching high into the blackness above, came into sight less than two hundred feet in front of them.
Whispered exclamations of shock and momentary terror escaped their lips. They had no idea the ship was so close. It looked as though they could reach out and touch it! Dim figures moved about on deck, with ropes and disembarking planks at the ready, while a half-dozen burly sailors wielded long poles to steady their movement and ease the ship’s approach to the shoals.
“What is that they’re speaking?” whispered Rutherford at his friend’s ear. “I can’t make out a word of it.”
Powell listened a moment.
“By all the—!” He swore under his breath. “They’re Turks. It’s not the Bandit at all!”
“Pirates!” exclaimed Rutherford, rising to his feet.
“Shut up and stay where you are!” said Powell, laying a restraining hand on his friend’s arm and pulling him back down.
“We’ve got to get out of here!”
“They’re too close. They’ll be landing below us in less than two minutes. If we try to make for the top now, they’ll hear us for sure, then come after us and slit our throats.”
“But—”
“Just sit down and keep your mouth closed,” said Powell in an urgent whisper. “If we don’t make a move, they’ll never know we’re here.”
Moments later the leading edge of the hull thudded against the shoreline. A few shouts followed. The boys heard a scurrying of movement and ropes and planks and jumping and strange shouts in Arabic as the crew secured the vessel. Within minutes a line of dark-skinned thieves began streaming back and forth between ship and shore carrying crates and boxes.
“What are they doing?” whispered Rutherford into his companion’s ear.
“Unloading some kind of cargo. I can’t tell what. They must be stashing it somewhere down there.”
They could make out little through the foggy blackness, only the tramping of feet back and forth across the planks, evil-sounding voices, and the movement of dim shadows. They sat shivering and motionless for an hour.
Gradually it became clear the operation was nearing completion. As suddenly as they had come, they now quickly withdrew the planks and heaved the ropes on board. The pikemen again took their positions and leaned heavily against their poles. Inch by inch the great vessel separated from the rocks.
“Are they leaving?” whispered Rutherford anxiously.
“Looks like it. The tide’s probably about to turn.”
“I’m heading back to the top!”
“No—wait till they’re gone.”
Gradually the sight of the ship receded mysteriously and silently into the mist. When they heard no more, Powell rose and motioned for his friend to follow. Carefully they crept back up to the bluff.
“I’m getting out of here!” said Rutherford, pausing to pick up his lantern where he had stashed it behind some large stones.
A New Dawn Over Devon Page 1