Yet once more she noted a verse among the center references beside 2 Kings 9:12. This time it led her to Numbers 27:8: And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.
And from it to Ezekiel 16:46: And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.
And there the scriptural trail seemed to end. For beside Ezekiel 16:46 no additional reference in the center column was noted.
Amanda sat back, eyes wide, shaking her head as she glanced again over the page of notes she had taken, and the underlined words she had written down while progressing through the verse-to-verse trail.
54
Culmination
Amanda was more certain than ever that she knew what had happened that night in February of 1829.
It explained everything, all the way down to Bishop Crompton’s curious acquisition of Heathersleigh Cottage and his even more curious disposition of it at the time of his death. It might explain why the family Bible had been hidden, and why the London branch of the Rutherfords had always been so anxious to find it.
If only George were here, Amanda thought. He would love all this! And be able to make sense of it in a minute. But he wasn’t. So she had to try to figure it out herself.
Her discoveries might explain many of the hidden mysteries about this place that was their home. But they could not tell her what was to be done as a result.
Realizing what these revelations might mean, should she divulge what she had found? If she did, what would be the consequences to them all?
Amanda sat dumbfounded, staring at the Bibles and her papers, for probably thirty or forty minutes.
Gradually her spinning brain began to calm and her spirit quieted. What had begun to dawn on her was too huge. She could hardly take it in.
Half an hour later, still in a near daze, she rose. There was only one place she could pray through these stunning developments, and seek the guidance she knew was required for the decision that must be made. She knew it would not be her decision alone. But she had to know her own heart before she shared it with anyone else. Too much was at stake to speak lightly.
In a deepening mood of prayer, she left the library, descended the stairs, and walked out of the Hall.
Jocelyn came into the library shortly after Amanda’s departure. She saw the two Bibles on the table, still open, along with Amanda’s pen and several pages of notes spread about.
What had Amanda been working on? she wondered. And why was Maggie’s Bible here too?
With curiosity Jocelyn made her way slowly around the library, pausing at the north window. She saw Amanda outside walking slowly across the meadow. Was she on her way to Maggie’s? But as she went, Amanda now bore more northward, her step purposeful, toward the wooded area west of the cottage.
Jocelyn watched her for a few moments more, then turned to leave the library, pausing once again at the table where Amanda had been engaged in what looked like such intensive study. She glanced over the papers one more time, having no idea that the thoughts tumbling through her daughter’s mind at that moment so deeply concerned her own future.
Amanda reached her father’s prayer wood, as she still called it.
So many emotions always filled her every time she came here.
But today was like no other visit she had ever made. She had been given glimpses of the eternal reality of this place on previous occasions. But now for the first time the deepest purpose of Charles Rutherford’s prayer sanctuary was sweeping into the maturing spiritual consciousness of his daughter—that purpose to which God ultimately leads all those of his sons and daughters who seek him: the abandonment of their own ambitions, their own very selves, into his higher Will.
For all the years of her life, until these recent months of heartache-stimulated reversal and growth, the daughter of Charles Rutherford had tried to run from this highest of all life’s necessities, this ultimate of all life’s opportunities, this most precious of all life’s choices—the great privilege which, if not taken as the privilege it is, will ultimately one day become the great requirement, of laying down one’s own will, in a glorious moment exemplifying the crowning triumph of human freedom, to say, “‘Not mine, God my Father, but your will be done.’”
Amanda was now approaching that flowering pinnacle of human personhood, which her father’s and Timothy’s friend the Scotsman called the blossom of humanity: the moment of holy abandonment of herself into Another.
At last were the prayers of the father fulfilled in the daughter.
Amanda knelt down in the soft, moist grass, bowed her head to the ground, and began to pray, not knowing that she was doing exactly what her father had done during so many seasons of his own relinquishment of will.
“Lord, do your will,” burst from within her. “Show me what it is . . . tell me what you want me to do.”
She paused briefly, and then as the tears began to flow, added, “Make me willing, Lord . . . even to give up Heathersleigh, if that is your will.”
When Amanda rose to walk home half an hour later, her course was clear. She was confident she knew the Father’s will, and knew what her own father would have done in the same circumstances. Ultimately it would be her mother’s decision. But it would affect both herself and Catharine, as well as their mother, for the rest of their lives. So her own mind had to be clear.
As she went at last she understood that painful laying down of her father’s she had so resented years before when he had told them of his decision to leave politics.
Amanda smiled sadly as she went. He had known what it meant to relinquish, not only his life, but the ambitions of that life, into God’s hands. She had never understood before now. At last she understood his heart.
And now an equally momentous relinquishment faced them all. Her own personal battle with it had just been won, through many tears and much anguish of heart, and was now behind her.
As she was walking across the meadow back toward the Hall, still trying to dry her red eyes, she saw Betsy coming toward her.
“Betsy, have you seen my mother and sister?” asked Amanda.
“No,” answered Betsy. “When is Sister Hope coming back?”
“I don’t know, Betsy—in a few days, I believe.”
“I wish she would hurry.” Betsy walked toward the barn.
Amanda continued on. She found Catharine in the kitchen and Jocelyn in the sun-room.
“We have to go to Maggie’s,” she said. “Mother, would you have Hector hitch a buggy? I have to go get some things from the library.”
Before they could ask what it was all about, she was climbing the stairs. Jocelyn knew from the look on her face and the tone of her voice that whatever was on Amanda’s mind, it was serious.
She set about making preparations at once.
Upstairs in the library, Amanda began to gather the two Bibles and her notes, then paused and thought a moment.
She turned and walked to the well-familiar shelf that had been her father’s favorite, reached up, and took down a thick volume of one of the Scotsman’s stories. How she chanced to think of it she hardly knew, but all at once she remembered her father reading the passage to them years ago.
It took her three or four minutes to find it. Then, with the familiar voice of her father in her mind’s ear, she sat down and again read the now poignantly significant words:
To trust in spite of the look of being forgotten; to keep crying out into the vastness whence comes no voice, and where seems no hearing; to struggle after light, where there is no glimmer to guide; to wait patiently, willing to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail—such is the victory that overcomes the world, such is faith indeed.
After such victory Cosmo had to strive and pray hard. It was difficult for him.
But there was still one earthly clod c
linging to Cosmo’s heart. There was no essential evil in it, yet it held him back from the freedom of the man who, having parted with everything, possesses all things. The place, the things, the immediate world in which he was born and had grown up had a hold of his heart. The love was born in him and had a power in him. And though it had come down into him from generation after generation of ancestors, Cosmo was not one of those weaklings who find in themselves certain tendencies toward wrong which perhaps originated in the generations before them, who say to themselves, “I cannot help it, so why should I fight it?” and at once create a new evil, and make it their own by obeying the inborn impulse. Such inheritors of a lovely estate, with a dragon in a den which they have to kill that the brood may perish, make friends with the dragon, and so think to save themselves the trouble.
I do not think that Cosmo loved his home too much. I only think he did not love it enough in God. To love a thing divinely is to be ready to yield it without a pang when God wills it. But to Cosmo the thought of parting with the house of his fathers and the land that yet remained was torture. Instead of sleeping the perfect sleep of faith, he would lie open-eyed through half the night, hatching scheme after scheme to retain the house. He had yet to learn to leave the care of it to him who made it, for his castle of stone was God’s also. As he lay in the night in the heart of the old place, and heard the wind roaring about its stone roofs, the thought of losing it would sting him almost to madness.
Suddenly one night he became aware that he could not pray. It was a stormy night. The snow-burdened wind was raving and Cosmo lay still, with a stone in his heart, for he was now awake to the fact that he could not say, “Thy will be done.” He strained to lift up his heart to God, but could not. Something had arisen between him and his God and beat back his prayer. A thick fog was about him. In his heart not one prayer would come to life.
It was too terrible! Here was a schism at the root of his being. The love of things was closer to him than the love of God. Between him and God rose the rude bulk of a castle of stone. He crept out of bed, lay on his face on the floor, and prayed in an agony. The wind roared and howled, but the desolation of his heart made it seem as nothing.
“God!” he cried, “I thought I knew you, and sought your will. And now I am ashamed before you. I cannot even pray. But hear my deepest will in me. Hear the prayer I cannot offer. Be my perfect Father to fulfill the imperfection of your child. You know me a thousand times better than I know myself—hear me and save me. Make me strong to yield to you. And therefore, even while my heart hangs back, I force my mouth to say the words—Take from me what you will, only make me clean and pure. To you I yield the house and all that is in it. It is yours, not mine. Give it to whom you will. I would have nothing but what you choose shall be mine. I have you, and all things are mine.”
Thus he prayed, with a reluctant heart, forcing its will by the might of a deeper will that would be for God and freedom, in spite of the cleaving of his soul to the dust.
For a time his thoughts ceased in exhaustion.
When thought returned, all at once he found himself at peace. The contest was over, and in a few minutes he was fast asleep.
It was not that after the passing of this crisis on this particular night there was no more stormy weather. Often it blew a gale—often a blast would come creeping in—almost always in the skirts of the hope that God would never require such a sacrifice of him. But he never again found he could not pray. Recalling the strife and great peace, he would always at such times make haste to his Master, compelling the slave in his heart to be free and cry, “Do your will, not mine.” Then would the enemy withdraw, and again he breathed the air of the eternal.
When a man comes to the point that he will no longer receive anything except from the hands of him who has the right to withhold, and in whose giving alone lies the value of possession, then is he approaching the inheritance of the saints in light, those whose strength is made perfect in weakness.
With fresh tears in her eyes, Amanda rose, replaced the book, gathered the two Bibles, and went downstairs to join mother and sister.
55
Letter Home
Hope Guinarde sat at the writing desk in her room of the Rose Garden Hotel.
She didn’t know how much longer she would be in England. Perhaps she would get home before this letter reached the chalet. But her heart was so full that she had to find expression for her thoughts.
Dear Sisters, she wrote, my beloved Gretchen, Luane, Anika, Galiana, Agatha, Marjolaine, Clariss, Regina, and dear Kasmira (I am so pleased to be able to list you as one of our family!):
So much has happened since I came to England I hardly know where to begin. To think I was anxious, even afraid, hardly seems possible, for now I am full of more contented thoughts and feelings than I will ever be able to convey. Your gifts helped so much. Every one was so lovely, personal, and thoughtful, and whenever I grew anxious or lonely they gave me a delightful distraction. I laughed and cried halfway across France.
I was fearful when I actually got to London. The feelings of my youth tried to overwhelm me. But I faced them one at a time—and now am feeling much better, because the old fears have been put away for good.
I have been to the mission board. There were many memories but no regrets. It only made me happier for all the Lord has done in these latter years of my life. London is all so very different now knowing I have a family to return to. I looked up Mrs. Weldon who first befriended me. She is quite elderly and a widow now, but she remembered me, and we shared a fond visit and a laugh or two about my first dreadful days at the mission.
After arriving in London I went to Heathersleigh, Amanda’s home. It is a lovely country estate. We had no idea who Amanda was. Her father was an M.P. some years ago. Amanda is so changed I almost did not recognize her as the same young woman who was with us, as indeed she is not. She was in a dark cocoon when she came to us, but now she is a beautiful moth. She reminds me of the stunning and colorful moths we saw in the jungles of New Zealand. But a moth, not a butterfly, for a slight sense of night, a hint of sadness, seems always to cling to her beauty. I recognize the look of grief from when I lost my husband and baby.
As she wrote, a fresh wave of sadness briefly overwhelmed her at the reminder, and hot tears filled her eyes.
“Goodness, Lord,” said Hope when the tears were spent, “where did that come from?”
And then there is Betsy! Hope wrote as she continued with her letter.
She is a darling girl of about fourteen whose father was recently killed and who found her way to Heathersleigh, Amanda’s home. The moment I laid eyes on her I felt she to be the reason the Lord sent me to England. I think he may have her in mind as the chalet’s next guest. I have said nothing to her or Amanda’s mother yet. But I am so excited when I think of it, for she is such a dear. I told her about you, Galiana. She loves animals.
Hope set down her pen, her mind full of Betsy.
She rose from the writing table and left the room. She needed to walk . . . and think . . . and pray about this opportunity she had to give a girl the kind of life she had always dreamed of.
She found herself an hour later on the familiar street outside the orphanage where she had spent so many of her own early years, a multitude of thoughts and emotions swirling undefined through her.
Is this where Betsy could ultimately end up, she wondered, or someplace just like it? She could not stay at Heathersleigh forever. Eventually Jocelyn would have no choice but to inform the authorities, and then she would become a ward of the state. What would become of her then?
Memories flooded Hope’s heart and brain. How good God had been to her. How he had watched over her all her life. He had brought her out of this dark, cold, granite tomb to the most beautiful place in all the world and given her the lovely chalet built by her husband’s father.
She almost laughed aloud to think of the contrast between her past and her present life.
He had protecte
d her all these years, giving her the name Hope, knowing that he would fulfill her name and her childhood dream of having a place to belong.
And now she was in a position of being able to do that for another. No . . . not she—he. He could do that same thing for Betsy, who, like her, had no mother, no father, no place to call home.
She wished she could take all the girls here back with her. But she knew such a thing was impossible.
She gazed up at the tall, cold stone walls, hardly able to imagine Betsy having to move to such an institution.
As her thoughts and prayers continued to gather themselves around the memory of Betsy’s face in her mind’s eye, she thought of her own daughter, the precious little one who had not even lived twenty-four hours.
“Lord,” Hope began to pray, “is Betsy meant to be something more than simply a visitor, a guest, a sister at the Chalet? Is she—”
She could not complete the prayer.
Again her eyes filled with tears as she turned and began walking away from the orphanage. But the power of its memories could no longer touch her, and her heart swelled with joy at what God might intend.
56
Amanda’s Unwelcome Proposal
In the cottage Amanda sat at Maggie’s kitchen table with her mother and sister and Maggie, the recently discovered family Bible, Maggie’s Bible, and her sheets of handwritten notes, open and spread out before her as she explained her visit to the church and the clues she had found. She had just completed reading the various passages noted in the three sources.
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