A New Dawn Over Devon

by Michael Phillips

  She stood for several long moments as her gaze stretched across the fields. Even as unconscious prayers gathered themselves within her heart, the memory of an afternoon not so very different from this came to focus from out of the past in her mind’s eye.

  In the measure of eternity the years since had not really been so many. Yet the day she now recalled had in truth been another lifetime ago.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps echoing from the passage behind her.

  “Amanda . . . Amanda, are you up there?” came her sister’s voice up the narrow staircase.

  “Yes, Catharine,” she answered softly, half turning behind her. “I’m in the tower.”

  Amanda sent one final wistful gaze of poignant memory out the window, then turned into the small room just as Catharine entered through the large oak door that stood open where Amanda had left it a few minutes earlier.

  “Hi . . . what are you doing?” said Catharine with a buoyant smile.

  “Just coming to terms with a few memories,” said Amanda, returning her smile. “I have a lot to get used to now, things to put right from when I was so mixed up before.”

  “I know,” rejoined Catharine, giving Amanda an affectionate hug, “—do you want to be alone? I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “No, it’s all right. I’m through.”

  “Would you like to go for a ride? That’s why I was looking for you.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Amanda as arm in arm they left the tower and began the descent together.

  “I was thinking about riding out to see Grandma Maggie.”

  “Yes, I think I would like that,” answered Amanda. “In fact, I was just thinking about her.”

  “Good, I was hoping you would—I already asked Hector to saddle both horses.”

  ————

  Another young woman stood at the wood stove of a tiny flat in one of the coastal towns of that far southeastern portion of England known as Cornwall. She was neither old enough nor experienced enough to be as reflective as her Devonshire counterpart. But she stood staring at the sizzling skillet in front of her with eyes that might have been reflective had they anything to think about.

  She was but thirteen, and hers had not been an easy life. The struggle merely to survive and make the best of it consumed the days that made up her existence. She did not stop to consider whether she was happy or unhappy, or whether life was a good or an evil thing. Life was simply life. It was hard, but she had never known anything else and did not question it. She was still a child, though hints of changes gradually coming to her body gave evidence that womanhood was not far away.

  She stood at the stove watching the small slab of meat that was her father’s breakfast brown over the heat. He had not come home last night, and whenever he must work through the long hours when she had to stay alone, he arrived home in the morning hungry. She did not know what he did, only knew that some of it had to do with ships. What else occupied him at such times, she did not need to know. She knew enough not to ask, knew that the people she sometimes saw with him were bad people, knew enough to realize that when he spoke with them in low tones it was about things they would not want the bobby who sometimes walked their street to hear.

  Sully Conlin was a rough man, with rough friends. He laughed with them, swore with them, and drank with them, and sometimes fought with them. She thought ill neither of them nor her father because of it. She was not shocked by what she saw and heard. As much as is possible the crude language and coarse behavior passed over her. She did not know otherwise, and took it as one of the laws of existence that men did such things and that girls like her did their best to take care of them.

  That Conlin had once been a sailor he had not exactly told his daughter in so many words, but she knew it from the purple tattoo of anchors and ropes on his burly forearm, from the way he spoke, knew it from his dream of taking her away from Cornwall and showing her the world. He never talked about leaving or going somewhere . . . but always of sailing away.

  She knew it too from the fond gleam in his eye whenever he spoke of the sea.

  “The sea, Betsy,” he had said many times, especially after hard days of backbreaking labor on the docks, “the sea is our only friend. It may be hard, but the sea is fair, and treats all men the same. It took your mother, and to the sea we will all return in the end. If ever you are lost, find the sea and follow it.”

  But whatever he had been, and whatever kind of life he lived, Sully was good to his little girl and treated her gently. He was her father, and she loved him.

  Her mother had been dead now many years. All she had to remember her was a small oval photograph that her father kept beside his bed.

  Sometimes when he was gone, she would stare at the tiny picture and try to force to the surface from some region deep in her mind an image from her own life, a living memory that moved and spoke, whose voice she might faintly hear in the distance of the past.

  But it was no use. She had been aware of the photograph all the days of her life, and there had never been a time when it did not sit at her father’s bedside. Whatever actual memory might at one time have been alive in her brain was now too faded and indistinct to be distinguished from the photograph itself.

  Reality from the past and the small brown-faded image had by now blurred into a single hazy image, and she did not know whether she had actually known, or had ever even seen, the woman of the photograph. She knew it was her mother, yet her experience with women was so slight that in a practical way she hardly knew what the word mother meant.

  Her father often stared at the photograph too, especially when he came home and was quiet. She knew that at these times he had been involved with the bad men. Such moments brought a look to his face that made her tremble.

  “Ah, Elsbet,” he might say, gazing into her face as he cradled her white chin in his great rough palm, “it’s an evil world we live in.”

  What could she do but stare back with wide expression, wondering what he meant. Then he would turn, walk heavily to the bed and ease his huge weary frame onto it with a sigh, pick up the photograph while he sunk into reverie. The wife of Sully Conlin’s youthful manhood had been taken from him young. All he now had to remember her by was a tiny fading photograph, and the memory of her eyes that lit the expression of the daughter he had brought into the world with the only woman he had ever loved.

  And as he stared at the face now gone, quieting as he gazed upon it, his lips began to move in murmured remembrance.

  The watching girl knew he was talking to the woman of the picture, but could make out nothing of what he said. Yet something within her dawning intelligence sensed that at such times the poor man’s heart was smiting him with painful memories, and ached with a deeper loneliness than she could possibly understand.

  2

  The London Rutherfords

  In the London home of Gifford and Martha Rutherford, the mood at the breakfast table was quiet, formal, and somewhat strained, almost as if the three family members quietly partaking of their eggs, bacon, toast, and tea were strangers. Here too, as well as at the estate of their cousins in Devonshire, something was dramatically altered since the sudden death of Gifford’s first cousin Charles and his son George in the war. This change was most noticeable in Martha’s sad countenance, and to a lesser degree in her grown son Geoffrey, who resided at home and worked with his father in the Bank of London.

  “I have an appointment out in Devon tomorrow,” commented Gifford, hardly glancing up. “Care to accompany me?” It was obvious he was addressing his son. He would never have invited his wife along on anything of a business nature.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Geoffrey. “I have things to do here.” From his tone, however, he was clearly making an excuse.

  Gifford opened his mouth and was about to ask, “What’s wrong with you lately?” but thought better of it. On reflection, he concluded that he had best carry out his business alone. His son had grown curi
ously softhearted of late toward their cousins, hardly what he would have expected after having his proposal of marriage so rudely rebuffed by Amanda last year. To be truthful, Gifford was a little concerned about the boy. He was given to disturbing fits of quiet these days, even melancholy. It wasn’t like him. Gifford had thought of consulting his physician again to see if something might really be wrong with Geoffrey, even though to all appearances he seemed perfectly healthy.

  He would come around again, thought Gifford, glancing over the top of the financial section of the Times and across the table. He would make sure of it. He would leave nothing to chance. If the boy didn’t have the necessary fight to reach the top of the business world on his own, Gifford himself would insure his son’s future.

  A few minutes later Geoffrey excused himself from the table and went to his room to be alone. Thoughts of Devon, and business of his father, which he could only assume had to do with Heathersleigh, had put him in an irritable mood. In truth the sudden death of Charles and George had shaken him. It was not just that they were dead; he could not escape a nagging sense of guilt that his father’s influence had kept him out of the war, and that the dubious physical report from his father’s doctor had been faked for exactly that purpose. Even after four months he could not get the tragedy out of his mind. He couldn’t focus on his work. He couldn’t seem to focus on anything. Other things had been playing on his mind as well.

  Downstairs husband and wife concluded their strained morning repast without a word passing between them. Gifford rose and left the breakfast room. Martha poured herself another cup of tea and silently sighed.

  Forty minutes later Martha Rutherford watched her husband leave the expensively appointed residence on Curzon Street, then turned back from the window into the empty house. Her thoughts, like her son’s, had gathered this morning about their Rutherford cousins of Devon.

  She missed Amanda. She had so enjoyed their time together, the dresses they had made, all the places they had gone, the parties, the balls. What light and joy and laughter she had brought to the house. It had not been the same since.

  Martha’s thoughts turned to Amanda’s mother. She would like to go visit Jocelyn and the girls. They had always been nice to her. What they must be going through with poor Charles and George gone. But she knew Gifford would never hear of such a visit.

  A lonely tear rose in her eye. She knew it was impossible to make the slightest move toward friendship in that direction without her husband’s permission, and that was something he was not likely to give.

  She was not exactly afraid of him. Gifford would never hurt her, except by his silence, by his rude aloofness, by his cold indifference. As badly as she wanted a life outside the lonely walls of this palatial house, she was too unsure of herself to try to find it. It had been so long since she had had any real friends, she could hardly remember what it felt like. She would try to stay active with her few activities and helping with the war effort. But none of that could take away the terrible aloneness.

  Gifford gave her nothing. But he was all she had. And Martha Rutherford feared being left alone more than anything.

  3

  Heathersleigh Cottage

  Twenty minutes after setting out, the two Rutherford sisters rode into the sunny clearing of Heathersleigh Cottage, where, as did not surprise them, they found their friend and adoptive grandmother Margaret McFee, widowed now just less than a year, on hands and knees in her luxuriant flower garden. Despite Maggie’s years now stretching into the late seventies, evidenced by a head of unruly but pure white hair, her garden continued to grow, as inch by inch she tamed more of the surrounding clearing in the middle of the Devon woodland.

  Behind her rose the white-thatched home, large to go by the name cottage as it still did, built originally as a gamekeeper’s residence, whose mysterious history and curious changes of ownership had aroused such speculation throughout the community these past sixty years.

  During the final years of his life, as the callings of eternity had penetrated closer to his heart, the brief occupant, Bishop Arthur Crompton, had first flowered a sunny patch of earth along the cottage’s south wall. Neglect had come to it, however, for a short time after his death. But a fondness for flowers had early in her life become one of Maggie’s passions, and even while her mother still lived, Maggie began to reclaim some of the original garden. By the time it came into her own hands, the cottage was already surrounded with flower beds of various kinds, extending north, south, east, and west from its four walls through the clearing, toward her Bobby’s barn—a smaller replica of the house in design and appearance—and in places encroaching on the forest itself. In midspring, when in full bloom, the only approach to the cottage lay on two narrow, winding, hard-packed dirt paths through the maze of color.

  An altogether homier and cheerier setting it would be difficult to imagine, though now the ten-room cottage and sizeable barn seemed vacant and lonely to Maggie without her Bobby’s wit and laughter to fill them.

  Maggie’s faithful cow Flora was also gone. But she was too old to think of trying to care for another. The life-giving cottage in the woods was now home only to Maggie, her flowers, and a few ducks and geese that fended for themselves and made more racket and offered less friendship than either Flora or the flowers. Jocelyn provided all Maggie’s earthly needs in abundance, as a true daughter to a spiritual mother, and had done her best to encourage the dear lady to come live at the Hall with them. But Maggie said it was her heart’s wish to remain at the cottage until she was unable to take care of herself. If a time came when she could not, then she would consider the kind offer.

  Maggie glanced up from her work and smiled broadly as she saw her visitors. With a creak or two, she rose and ambled toward them while Catharine and Amanda dismounted and tethered their horses.

  “Hello, Grandma Maggie!” said Catharine, bounding forward and embracing her warmly.

  “Catharine . . . Amanda—how good of you to come.”

  “Good morning, Grandma Maggie,” said Amanda. “Whenever I see you, you are in your garden.”

  “It’s summer, my dear—time when growing things are at their best. And what would I do without dirt to put my hands in to see what I might make grow from it? I was about to have my morning tea—I’ll go inside and put the water on.”

  As Maggie turned, Amanda began to walk pensively about, recalling many past visits to this place when her eyes were unable to perceive what life dwelt here. Unconsciously she meandered toward the barn.

  Catharine and Maggie glanced silently at one another as they watched her go, more than half suspecting what was on her mind. Though both had prayed for this day, their hearts were sore for the one they loved. They would spare her the inner anguish of this long-delayed homecoming if they could, but knew they could not, and knew also that Amanda’s full healing required a measure of pain.

  Amanda wandered into the barn, now cool, dark, and silent. No snort or stamp of cow’s hoof, no swoosh from Bobby’s plane could now be heard except in the memories that gradually came alive in her brain. It all looked the same, yet felt so very different to the eyes of her adulthood, colored with the sadness of nostalgia and tinged in Amanda’s case with the bitterness of regret. Everywhere she walked, everything upon which her eyes fell, from the tower back at the Hall to the empty stalls and rusty tools and cracking leather harnesses of dear old Bobby’s barn, brought painful realizations of what she had been, and of those who were now gone whose forgiveness it was too late to seek. With her thoughts of Bobby came again the reminder—so common these days—that she could not go back and recapture a past she had let slip away without knowing how precious it would one day be to her.

  A tear came to her eye as she heard Bobby’s voice speaking to a nine-year-old girl. “What are you going to think,” he said, “when you’re older and God tries to tell you what to do?”

  Now she was older, Amanda thought, and the lessons from God’s voice had become painful necessities
because she had waited so long to listen.

  Amanda walked out of the barn back into the sunlight and slowly made her way toward the cottage. She found the others busy over a bit of lace Catharine had brought to ask Maggie about.

  Amanda smiled wistfully to herself. She wondered if it was too late for her to learn such things. Hearing her footsteps coming through the open door, they glanced up and Amanda turned what remained of her smile toward their faces.

  “I am so sorry about Bobby, Grandma Maggie,” she said. “It is one of my deepest regrets that I was away and out of the country when—” Again the tears began to flow. “I am . . . sorry about so many things.”

  Maggie walked forward and took her in her arms. They stood a moment or two until Amanda had regained her composure.

  “Regrets are part of life, dear,” said Maggie, stepping back. “We all must live with difficult memories because no one lives a perfect life. The pain helps us grow.”

  “Sometimes it is almost more than I can bear.”

  “I know, dear. But it will lessen, and you will be stronger for it. We all must also learn to go forward with thankfulness in our hearts.”

  “I cannot imagine ever being thankful for what I have done,” said Amanda.

  “Perhaps not for that,” rejoined Maggie, “but you can be thankful for how God will use it, and bring good out of it in the end.—But come, the tea is ready. Let us go to the sitting room.”

  As they walked out of the kitchen and into the largest room of the house, Amanda noticed again the oak secretary built by Maggie’s great-grandfather, where, as Maggie had shown them a few months earlier, she had discovered the deed to Heathersleigh Cottage.

  “Grandma Maggie,” said Amanda as she sat down, “do you remember the day when I came for a visit, and you told me about your grandmother’s favorite Bible verse?”