“That would be the simplest and easiest possibility,” Amanda nodded, “just to do nothing. I have thought of that, of course. But I do not think I could bear knowing that for the rest of my life my legal name was Mrs. Ramsay Halifax.” Amanda shook her head and sighed at the very sound of the words. “And I suppose, as we are talking about my options, there is always the possibility of actually going back to Ramsay,” she added, “but I could never do that.”
“Then let me turn the question back on you,” said Jocelyn, “and ask what you asked me a moment ago—what do you want to do? What does your heart tell you?”
“I don’t know,” groaned Amanda, “—I want to do what is right. I just don’t know what that is.”
“And remarriage?” said Jocelyn.
“Isn’t that getting the cart a little ahead of the horse, Mother?”
“I don’t see how you can resolve the present without looking ahead to the future, dear. The present and the future are always linked. I think you must look at the entire prospect of what is facing you—present as well as future.”
“I see what you are saying,” nodded Amanda. “To answer you, then, I don’t see how I could ever remarry, Mother.”
“Why not?”
“Even if I divorce Ramsay, I must still bear the consequences of what I did. On that point I do agree with Sister Anika.”
21
The Secret Room
In the Hall, thirteen-year-old Elsbet Conlin glanced about her with wide eyes of wonder as she followed Catharine through the back of the moveable bookcase in the library, along a tight corridor, and around two turns.
“We are between the walls of the library and main corridor,” said Catharine as they went. To Betsy’s ears Catharine’s voice sounded so different in here. It seemed they had stepped back in time a hundred years—as in truth they had. “From inside any of those rooms,” Catharine went on, “it is impossible to know all this is here.”
“How can there be space for this walkway?” asked Betsy.
“The walls were constructed with a void or empty space behind them. My brother explained it all to me, and drew me pictures and diagrams, but it took me a long time to make sense of it. That’s where we are walking, in the empty spaces behind the walls. Many of them are connected, and you can go almost anywhere in the house through these hidden passageways. But there are only four ways to get into the maze—at least that’s all George ever found. You can go all the way down to the basement and outside, or to the tower.”
“What about the secret room?” asked Betsy.
“That’s what I will show you now,” replied Catharine. “It is just as George discovered it. You can’t get there any other way but this. It’s just like a hidden cave right in the middle of the house. It’s so well hidden that no one knew about it for years, until George discovered it.”
Catharine led on, not following the descent and later ascent to the storage room by which George had first discovered the labyrinth under the old chest of records and journals, but instead leading Betsy around various turns paralleling the walls of the rooms, arriving finally at a stairway going straight up above them like a corkscrew. She took it. Betsy followed up into darkness. At the top, Catharine paused, then pushed up on the ceiling above her. A two-foot square panel of wood fastened to invisible hinges swung up and out of sight. The next thing Betsy knew she saw Catharine disappearing into the hole. She scrambled up after her.
“Here we are!” said Catharine, “And, thanks to George, there is even a light.”
She flipped a switch and the room filled with the light of a dim bulb hanging overhead.
Betsy found herself on the floor of a room some eight feet square, with the same open beams of the roof above her as before. The wind was still blowing fiercely outside, and they heard it all the louder the moment they climbed into the secret room from below.
“What’s that noise?” said Catharine, glancing about.
“I think it’s a roof tile,” said Betsy. The clattering and scraping was now right above them. “I heard it before, in the garret hallway.”
“You were on the other side of this wall,” said Catharine, pointing to her left. “And this one,” she added, indicating the other, “was built to block the passage to the tower. These boards you see are exactly like the ones on the other side. George said this room was built later by blocking off the passage right in the middle. So you can’t get all the way through the garret of the north wing now because both corridors end at these two walls.”
“But why?” asked Betsy.
“George didn’t know. We had a great-grandfather that George said was more than a little eccentric, and his uncle was lord of the manor before him and was the same way. George said it probably had something to do with one of them.”
“But why would they have built it like this?” persisted Betsy.
“George thought they made it for a hiding place.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know. Neither did George.”
22
How Far Should Accountability Go?
Wouldn’t your grief, and the divorce itself,” Jocelyn had just asked Amanda as Betsy and Catharine sat talking in the secret room, “be bearing the consequences?”
“In a way, perhaps,” answered Amanda. “But I could not simply go on afterward as if nothing had happened.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jocelyn.
“I cannot ignore the Scriptures just for my own convenience merely to escape my accountability.”
“But you have said that you were not yourself, that you were not thinking clearly.”
“Ramsay may have been a cad, and maybe to a degree I was brainwashed, though I certainly did not think so at the time. But I am still accountable. No one made me marry Ramsay.”
“I still do not understand why you feel so strongly that you can never marry again.”
“Because of what I just read in Matthew 5:32 this morning. It is a passage Sister Anika told me about.”
“What does it say?”
“That to remarry would be adultery,” answered Amanda.
“Adultery!” repeated Jocelyn, shocked at Amanda’s blunt statement.
“There is no other way to look at it. ‘Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.’ There it is, Mother, in Jesus’ own words. I would be a divorced woman—”
At the words, Amanda turned away and began to cry. Jocelyn took her in her arms, and they sat quietly for a moment.
“The sound of it is too horrible to think about,” said Amanda after a while, wiping her eyes. “But if a man would be committing adultery to marry me—after a divorce, I mean—then I would just as surely be committing adultery myself.”
“Those are strong words, Amanda. Surely God would not condemn you so harshly for making a mistake.”
“It is not that God will condemn me, it is about my doing what is right. And I was reading several other passages, too, before I came out this morning,” Amanda went on. “Another passage Sister Anika told me about is in Mark 10. It is even clearer than the verse in Matthew.”
“And?”
“It says that if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she is an adulteress.”
Again the word jolted Jocelyn’s sensitive ears. She was familiar enough with the passage, but to think of Jesus’ hard words in relation to her own daughter had taken her by surprise.
“I wish it wasn’t there,” continued Amanda. “I hate what those words make me feel like, so dirty and unclean. But even if Ramsay committed adultery and I am free to divorce, the verse still says that I cannot remarry without being an adulteress.”
“Dear, please—that is such a terrible word. I just don’t think—”
“But the words are clear, Mother, in black and white,” insisted Amanda.
“But surely you don’t want to remain unmarried.”
“Of course I don’t want to live the rest of my life alone. But can I ignore that passage, an
d say the words don’t really apply to me and my situation, just for the sake of my own happiness? What kind of obedience to the Scriptures is that? You and Father taught us that the Bible was to be obeyed. I didn’t do very well back then. I resented it every time either of you would say it. But I am trying to take the Bible seriously now.”
“You are convinced that’s what it means?”
“I don’t know, Mother!” said Amanda in frustration. “I just don’t see where Jesus or Paul say that certain men and women may remarry because they later found out things about their husbands and wives they didn’t know before. Maybe I am missing something. I haven’t studied the Bible very diligently, that’s for sure. But it seems to say that remarriage after divorce is adultery and that’s it. Oh, it is so confusing!”
A lengthy silence intervened. Finally Amanda spoke again.
“I have spent my whole life resisting authority,” she said, “caring nothing for what was right or for what God wanted, only what I wanted. I didn’t learn how to submit to you and Father when I was supposed to. So I must begin to live that way now. How else can I know God fully if I never learn what he wants me to learn? I don’t want to add to my troubles now by ignoring what the Bible says just so that I won’t be lonely for the rest of my life.”
“In the matter of your future,” remarked Jocelyn, “much will depend on how you feel God leading you inside. I have never thought of these things.”
“If loneliness is the price I must pay for getting myself into a marriage I shouldn’t have,” Amanda went on, “then perhaps I have to be willing to pay it. I can no longer make light of morality issues. I know what I did hurt you and Father deeply. It cut against all you stood for as Christians and as a husband and wife. If I am going to turn my life around, I have to start sometime. And I think that time has to be now. I have to start making decisions in a new way than I ever did before, saying not what do I want to do, but what is the right thing to do.”
Again Amanda sighed.
“I wish Daddy were here,” she said. “I would just ask him what to do. But since he is not, I must turn to you.”
“I know, dear. But honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. Even with your father gone, I would never remarry. He is the only husband I ever want to have. It is different for you. You are much younger and—”
“Uh-oh . . . here comes the rain!” cried Amanda suddenly.
The next instant mother and daughter were on their feet and bolting for the house.
23
Something Is at Hand
The storm that drenched Heathersleigh Hall and all of England had also blown through Switzerland, and was now past. On the morning after the showers, the sun shone brilliantly over the mountain landscape, creating a dewy blanket of diamonds everywhere. Every flower and blade of grass surrounding the Chalet of Hope near Wengen, Switzerland, sparkled with a thousand subtle colors of a jeweled rainbow.
Hope Guinarde came down into the large room of the chalet, whose great fireplace sat quiet during these months of late summer, and realized she was the first of the household to stir. Even Sister Agatha, usually awake before everyone, had not yet made an appearance. She added fresh wood to the cook stove, put on water to boil, and went out into the crisp but sunny morning.
She walked down the sloping pathway toward the pond, surrounded at this time of year with lush grasses and abundant flowers of great variety and every color. This was such a beautiful and peaceful place, she thought. Could any spot on earth more visibly lift the human spirit toward its Creator than the high alpine meadows of Switzerland?
You are so good to me, Lord, she whispered. I do not deserve it, yet you constantly lavish me with blessing. I am so grateful.
Slowly she made her way about the pond, her thoughts gradually drifting across the miles to their guest of the previous year who had so gotten under their collective skin. She had read Amanda’s first letter again just last night before retiring. Every time she thought of it she was struck anew with the remarkable work God was able to do at this place, even, sometimes, in spite of her own lack of faith. She felt that she was often too blunt, so weak and immature at times. Yet God continued to change lives, not because of her, not because of any of them, but because this was his place, his work.
A sense had begun growing upon her that a work in some new life was about to begin. The sense of preparation, of needing to get a new room ready was building again in her heart—a feeling so familiar because it had come on so many occasions, yet also surprisingly new every time, as the quiet voice of the Spirit’s leading always is.
And with that leading, Amanda too had been occupying her thoughts.
After some time of prayerful reflection, Sister Hope turned and began walking up the hill back to the chalet. She saw Sister Gretchen standing on the porch waiting for her. Behind the house, Sister Marjolaine’s tiny form was visible walking toward the chicken shed, basket in hand, to gather the morning’s eggs for their breakfast.
“Good morning, Gretchen,” she said, smiling as she walked toward the house.
“Good morning, Hope—it is spectacular, isn’t it!”
“As long as I live, I will never tire of this place.”
“Sister Agatha has coffee brewing . . . and I can see that something is on your mind.”
Sister Hope laughed. “Haven’t you been sensing it too,” she said, “the undefined stirring . . . the expectation?”
“Perhaps,” replied Sister Gretchen. “But I think this time it comes more from watching it come upon you.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Of course.”
Again Sister Hope laughed. “I hadn’t realized I was so transparent.”
“Maybe not to all the others . . . but you are to me. Tell me—what are you thinking?”
“Nothing specific, only that perhaps this time it will not be someone coming to us, but rather someone we must go find.”
“Like Amanda in Milan.”
“Exactly. And speaking of Amanda, she has been on my mind a great deal as well, as if she is involved in whatever is approaching for us.”
“Perhaps she is coming back.”
“Her most recent letter indicated nothing. Yet I feel . . . I don’t know, as if I need to see her again.”
“How wonderful that would be,” said Sister Gretchen, “now that . . .”
“I know what you mean,” added Sister Hope, finishing her friend’s uncompleted thought, “—now that she is right with herself.”
The two women were silent a moment or two, both their thoughts revolving around Amanda.
“Since we received her first letter after she was home,” Sister Gretchen said after a minute, “I have often wondered if she might return, and might even become one of us.”
Sister Hope nodded.
“I have thought often of that first conversation you and I had about her soon after her arrival,” Sister Gretchen went on, “and the sense we both had, even then, that her life was destined for service and ministry in the Lord’s work.”
Sister Hope smiled at the thought. “It was difficult to see back then. But I still believe it to be true.”
“As do I,” agreed Sister Gretchen. “He has something for her.”
As they were talking the door opened behind them, and two beautiful but very distinctive young women walked out to join them.
“Good morning, Kasmira . . . Hello, Sister Anika,” said Sister Hope.
“Good morning, sisters,” replied Kasmira with a bright smile. “A lovely day,” she added in a thick accent.
24
To London
Two weeks after their conversation, Amanda sought Jocelyn in the sun-room.
“Mother,” she said, “I have been thinking about what you said when we were talking before. I think it was good advice when you recommended that I speak with either Vicar Coleridge or Timothy. I would like to do that. I realize that the first step in learning to make decisions differently is probably to follow wise coun
sel from those who love me, not reject it as I did yours and Father’s years ago. So . . . you gave me that advice, and I am going to take it.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Jocelyn.
“As much as I do not want to go to the city again, I think I should talk to Timothy.”
“He would be glad to come here.”
“I know he would. But something tells me this is a step I need to take, and go to London this time for the right reason—to learn how to obey. Will you go with me?”
“I’m not sure I should,” replied Jocelyn. “We have Betsy to think of.”
“Yes, of course—what was I thinking?”
“Why don’t you ask Catharine?”
“That’s a great idea. I think I will!”
————
On a cold and drizzly morning a week later, the two sisters sat on the train bound for London. Amanda was quiet and pensive. The bare trees evidencing the approach of winter were the perfect landscape for her thoughts. Would a new spring ever bloom again in her life? Catharine had noticed her mood ever since their departure from Milverscombe. She glanced over several times, then finally spoke up cheerily, trying to draw her sister out.
“You have changed so much, Amanda,” said Catharine brightly. “You have grown so wonderfully in the Lord since you came home. What a story you have to tell about what God has done for you. I know he will use it to help others.”
Amanda looked toward her and smiled, but said nothing.
“In a way, though it sounds funny to say it,” Catharine went on, “I am almost envious.”
Now Amanda’s expression as she listened turned questioning.
“I admire how you have been able to befriend Betsy,” Catharine went on. “I cannot help but think it must be because you have suffered too. I haven’t had that experience. I haven’t got that kind of story to tell.”
“How fortunate you are that you don’t,” rejoined Amanda sadly. “I’m sure it must please the Lord that you grew in obedience and godliness all your life. You have something I will never have.”
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