How could it be? What was the difference between them? Where had the anger and irritability come from that had so characterized her nature for twenty years? And where had Stirling’s gentleness originated?
Had they each perhaps chosen their opposite paths of personality, chosen them in a thousand tiny invisible ways every day, chosen to react differently? Had she chosen her anger without even knowing it? Had he chosen his gentleness, perhaps equally without knowing it?
The face of Rune Blakeley came into Amanda’s mind. When and how had the change, so evident now, come upon him? He had been around nearly every day since they had moved to the cottage. She had become so accustomed to his presence as to mostly forget what he used to be like. She had come to take his presence for granted. Yet how different he had once been. She had considered him a cruel tyrant.
How did Rune Blakeley cope with his memories of the past? Amanda wondered. If she struggled with her guilt . . . how much worse must be his!
She was still thinking of the father and son as she entered the wooded sanctuary and sat down on her favorite large stone. It was quiet and still. Amanda felt like the only person in the world. She tried to pray but could not. Her prayers were silent. God was silent. If she was going to move on in life, she had to put this obstacle she was struggling with behind her . . . but how?
At last she rose and began the return walk the way she had come.
Where could she go for help? Who could understand the mental torment of the words that had once come out of her own mouth—horrible words, biting and cruel words—constantly stinging at her memory? Words that would never go away no matter how many times she asked for God’s forgiveness. Even if God had forgiven her, the words were still there, words of anger, hatred, bitterness toward her father.
As she went, it began to come on her that there might be only one person who could really understand what she was facing, and perhaps who had even felt what she was feeling. Memories of her past association with him flooded back into her mind. The very thought of going to see him filled her with dread. But once the thought came, she knew she had to face him no matter how hard it might be.
Rather than return to the cottage, therefore, she continued along the ridge of a low hill just north of the cottage, winding her way at length back down into Milverscombe. Minutes later she was at the Blakeley’s door.
Agatha Blakeley answered her knock.
“Hello, Amanda . . . come in.”
“Hello, Agatha—is your husband at home?”
“Yes, dear,” answered Mrs. Blakeley slowly, looking at Amanda with a questioning expression, “—he is working out back in the barn.”
“Do you think he would mind if I went to see him?”
“Of course not,” replied Stirling’s mother, still uncertain why Amanda would want to see her husband. “Come this way, I’ll let you out through the kitchen.”
Amanda followed. Moments later she was walking across the grass behind the house toward the small barn. The door stood open. Agatha left her and returned to the house.
It was cool and dark as Amanda entered. She heard Rune pounding away on a piece of machinery at the far end. She walked across the hard-packed floor toward him. He sensed the approach, put down his hammer, and turned. Amanda stopped as he faced her.
The two looked at one another for a moment, the one surprised to see this unexpected visitor, the other intimidated now that the moment had finally come when she was standing before the man she had once both hated and feared. This was not an encounter either would have anticipated.
“Uh . . . Miss Amanda,” said Rune, nodding hesitantly.
“Hello, Mr. Blakeley,” said Amanda. “I wonder if you would mind if I talked to you for a minute.”
“Not at all, miss.” Blakeley set down the hammer and unconsciously wiped his hands on shirt and trousers, though they were covered with as much dirt as his palms and the action accomplished little by way of cleaning them. He was a tall man and sturdily built from having labored hard all his life. His round face was perspiring freely in the heat and bore a splotch or two from the back of his wrist rubbing against it earlier. His forehead had receded to the crown of his head, and thus about half his hair was gone. What remained was thin and graying. The lines and cracks about his eyes and mouth gave them what might be called a hard expression. In it, however, were mingled hints of both remorse and weariness, for he had been a difficult man for most of his life. But largely thanks to Amanda’s father, he had won the battle against drink, though it had done its best to age him before his time. Behind the rough exterior that remained, his eyes now shone with life and his lips were eager to smile.
“I saw Stirling a little while ago,” began Amanda. “He was cutting down a tree.”
“The lad’s a good worker, all right,” nodded his father. “I can’t keep up with him no more.”
Amanda forced a smile. A brief silence fell. Rune shifted his weight on his feet a little nervously. It was uncomfortable having the daughter of the most important man and woman in the region standing in his poor little barn, and he hadn’t a notion what she was doing here.
“I . . . I don’t know how to say this, Mr. Blakeley,” began Amanda again. “But I am . . . I am having a hard time since my father’s death . . . I feel very badly about how I treated him when I was younger, things I said, and then leaving like I did—”
She hesitated and glanced down at the floor.
“I understand, miss. He was a good man, your father.”
“Yes . . . yes, I know that now,” said Amanda. “But, you see . . . I didn’t know how good he was when I was young. You probably don’t know it, but I was terribly cruel to him. I said very horrible things to him and treated him very badly. I once told him I hated him, and then stood and watched with fire in my eyes, wanting to hurt him—God forgive me!—while he just sat, saying nothing, and slowly began to cry. The memory of it haunts me almost every day.”
“I can hardly imagine it of you, miss.” In truth, everyone in town knew how difficult Amanda had been, and most had seen firsthand how she treated father and mother.
“It is true, Mr. Blakeley. I was a very angry and self-centered girl. And now my father is gone . . . and sometimes I am miserable with guilt over how I was to him. I’ve told God that I am sorry and I try to tell myself that both God and my father forgive me. But I can’t help it, I still feel so bad that sometimes all I can do is find a place to be alone and just cry.”
“I’m sorry to hear it, miss. Your father—he forgives you . . . I can tell you that for sure.”
Again Amanda hesitated.
“I don’t mean . . . I don’t want to be rude . . . this is very awkward, Mr. Blakeley—I don’t want to pry or get personal, but—I know that you . . . I mean you know that I wasn’t very nice to you either, before, you know . . . I saw how you—”
“Don’t trouble yourself to say it, miss,” said Rune. “I was a bad father and a bad husband, and anybody with eyes to see for miles around knew it. You won’t hurt my feelings none by saying it to my face.”
Amanda smiled awkwardly. “I don’t mean to bring up the past,” she said. “But . . . do you ever think of . . . you know, do you remember how you used to be?”
“Of course, miss,” replied Blakeley. “You don’t forget how you were.”
“How well I know that.”
“I remember how bad I was every day.”
“Then how do you stand it?” said Amanda. “That’s what I came to ask you, because . . . I thought you might understand what it is like for me. It must be very painful for you.”
“Sometimes I can’t stand it,” answered Blakeley. “Sometimes I got to do just what you said, and come in here, to the barn I mean, where I can be alone and I just have to cry for a spell, to get it out.”
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s all right, miss,” rejoined Stirling’s father. “How can a man like me not sometimes get overcome with memories of what
he did to the poor boy? Sometimes there’s nothing else to do but let a few tears out.”
The man sniffed and glanced away, sending the back of his giant wrist against cheek and eyes again, though this time not from heat and sweat.
Amanda was touched. She had never expected a man like Rune Blakeley to be so free with what was in his heart.
“I think,” she said after a moment, “that perhaps to some extent I have accepted God’s forgiveness. It is hard, but I think I know that God forgives me. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so, miss.”
“But forgiving myself is even harder,” Amanda went on. “And—”
She hesitated and looked away.
“Say anything you want, Miss Amanda,” said Blakeley. His voice was almost tender. He had never had a daughter, but if he had had one, he was now showing the side of his nature that would have loved one with the special love of a father.
“What I was going to ask,” Amanda continued slowly, “after the way you . . . you know, how you treated Stirling when he was young . . . how—”
She paused again, glancing away. She could not look directly into his face.
“—how did you ever . . . how did you come to forgive yourself? That’s what torments me, Mr. Blakeley—how can I ever forgive myself? I wanted to hurt my poor father, and I did hurt him, and it torments me—”
Amanda now glanced up helplessly and again took courage to find Rune’s eyes.
“I have to know,” she said, eyes glistening as she blinked at them hard, “how do you forgive yourself?”
Tears now came into the man’s eyes in earnest. But he did not look away or resist her imploring gaze.
“I know what you’re talking about, Miss Amanda,” he replied. “You’re right about that—I do understand. A lot of folks couldn’t probably know what it’s like, even for a pretty young lady like yourself. But I know what guilt can do to a person. I’ve lived with it all these years. That’s why I would drink sometimes. Even now I sometimes look at Stirling’s bad leg, and my heart gets so sick . . . God help me, that—”
His voice caught in a sob.
“I find myself thinking,” he struggled to continue, “that maybe I caused it myself one time, when I was mad with whiskey, by hitting him when he was young . . . Oh, God—”
He glanced away, voice choked in convulsive breaths.
“I know it can’t be,” he struggled to continue, “on account of Dr. Armbruster said he was born with it. But that’s how the guilt eats at me. It’s a terrible thing, miss. Can you imagine the grief I feel to remember—”
Rune broke down and wept and could not continue for several seconds. Amanda’s heart stung her to watch the man lose control of himself. She reached out her hand and placed it on his arm.
“It is more than I can bear sometimes to remember what I did,” he tried to go on in a halting voice, “the cruel things I said both to him and his mother . . . the pain I caused them both. No, Miss Amanda, I won’t never forget . . . I won’t never be able to completely forgive myself. It’s a burden I have to bear every day. Every day I wake up, it’s still there. I can’t help it. Those memories are like a knife in my heart that’ll never go away. I think they hurt me more to remember than they hurt Stirling.”
“But you seem . . . happy enough. To watch you and Stirling now, you appear the best of friends.”
“I’m learning to find happiness in life even with that knife still in my heart.”
“So how do you do it?”
“I have the boy to thank for that,” replied Rune, wiping at his eyes again, his voice gradually calming and becoming steadier. “I can’t . . . I can’t completely forgive myself, to answer your question. But it’s Stirling’s love for me, and his forgiveness of me that enables me to hold my head up at all and forgive myself a little. It’s by watching him love me that I see a little bit of what God’s forgiveness must be like. I don’t deserve for Stirling to love me, but he does anyway. He even treats me like he respects me and honors me. Think of that! Think of that—he graduated with honors, but he honors me. My Stirling is about the best young man in the world. I don’t deserve such a son. He is God’s gift to his mother and me. So I try to hold my head up, because of him.”
“That is an amazing thing to say, Mr. Blakeley,” said Amanda. “It must make you love him very much.”
“I do love him, miss. I always loved him, but I was just too mixed up with drink and my own selfishness, and my own sin that made me say and do things I hated myself for later.”
“And so . . . now . . . do you feel that God’s forgiveness and Stirling’s forgiveness helps you forgive yourself?”
“I believe in God’s forgiveness all right,” replied Blakeley. “Your father helped me, sat with me, prayed with me, even held me in his arms when I wept in anguish for what I had done. And Stirling, my son, bless him, he shows me every day that he cares about me. Yes, that helps me—I can’t say I completely forgive myself. I’ll never be able to do that, but it helps me be able to look up to God and give thanks more than I ever thought I’d be able to in my life with the mess I made of things. My heart still hurts for the memory of what I did. But I try to live by faith—that’s how your father explained it to me, when you try to live one way, even though you might feel a different way. So I do my best to believe in forgiveness, even though I still feel the pain at the memories. And I try to tell myself every day that no one holds my past against me no more.”
“Do you think God forgives us completely?” said Amanda after a brief silence. “Or do you think he still must be just a little upset with us for how we behaved both to my father and to Stirling?”
“I can hardly imagine God being angry with you, miss,” replied Blakeley. “If all your father always told me about him was true.”
“So will we ever be able to forgive ourselves completely, then?”
“I don’t know, miss. But I think I have an idea what your father might tell me if I asked him that, which I did a time or two.”
“I would like to hear it.”
“I told him once that I didn’t feel worthy of being forgiven. And he asked me if I thought God’s forgiveness was based on my worthiness. I said I hadn’t thought about it. And he said that if it were, there would be no forgiveness at all, because if there’s something to forgive it means someone’s sinned. Then he said something I’ll never forget. He said, ‘We’re all unworthy, Rune. We’re all sinners. I’m just as unworthy as you, and you’re just as unworthy as me. Nobody’s worthy of God’s forgiveness. We’re all sinners together. But he forgives us anyway.’ That really helped me, miss. Then he said that once you accept God’s forgiveness, there ain’t nothing standing in the way to forgive yourself. You just have to decide to do it, he said. You just have to say, ‘God, thank you for forgiving me. I accept your forgiveness. So I’m going to forgive myself.’”
Amanda nodded thoughtfully. Once again her own father’s words were coming back to her own point of need, just as they had that day on Bloomsbury Way when she was listening to Timothy preach her father’s sermon.
“But you haven’t been able to do that?” she said after a moment.
“Not completely, miss. But I keep trying every day. And every day it gets a little easier. Sometimes I have to do it over and over. It’s like the drink. Sometimes after all these years, if I catch a smell of it, it pulls on me. I have to say no real hard, and remember your father and imagine him there beside me helping me to say no like he done so many times. The guilt pulls on me the same way sometimes, and I have to remember your father telling me that God’s forgiven me.”
Amanda smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Blakeley . . . I feel much better already just talking to you.”
“I hope some of what I said helps, miss.”
“I know it will,” Amanda nodded. “Thank you for telling me,” she said softly. “Somehow just knowing that you understand what it is like gives me hope.”
Amanda paused, then looked up into
the dirty, rugged, tearstained face.
“Will you . . . pray with me, Mr. Blakeley?” she asked.
“You mean . . . here—right now?”
Amanda nodded.
“I never been much at praying out loud. I never prayed with nobody in my life except your father, when he was helping me get over the drink. But I’d be honored to pray with you, if you really want me to.”
“I need to pray with someone,” said Amanda, “who really understands how hard it is to live with the kind of memories that you and I have to live with.”
Rune nodded. Neither spoke for a moment.
“Dear, Lord,” prayed Amanda. “Thank you so much for Mr. Blakeley, and that he wasn’t afraid to tell me what it’s been like for him. I pray that you would help us both get over our guilt, and help us know that you love and forgive us, and that both Stirling and my father love and forgive us too. Help us, Lord, because—”
Her voice cracked momentarily.
“—because . . . it is so hard sometimes.”
The barn was quiet for a minute. Amanda sniffed a few times and drew in two or three deep breaths.
“Lord,” said Rune at length, “I ask you to help Miss Amanda feel better about herself. I know I was with her father a lot when she was gone, and there wasn’t nothing in his heart for her all that time but love—”
At the words Amanda began to cry. They stung all the more with such bitter regret in her heart because she knew they were true. Her father had been forgiving her the instant the words “I hate you” had shocked him into tears of anguish as they had exploded out of her mouth.
“—and I know he forgave her a long time ago,” Rune went on, “so I ask you to help her forgive herself.”
“Yes, Lord,” Amanda added softly in a faltering voice, still weeping, “help me . . . show me how to forgive myself.”
A New Dawn Over Devon Page 36