“Thank you, sir,” replied Logan. Atkinson’s words meant as much as the medal itself.
“It’s all got to be kept unofficial for now,” added Atkinson. “Security and all that, you know.”
“But after the war,” put in Kramer, “you’ll be a hero of Britain. Of France, too, for that matter!” Then a coy grin erupted on his broad face. “Why, you’d probably be able to win a seat in Parliament!”
Logan smiled at the outrageous idea.
“All I want to do now is go home and live a normal life for a while.”
“You shall have that, my boy,” said Atkinson.
“But the war isn’t over yet,” said Kramer. “We can still use you.”
Logan knew the demands of war would continue to be felt for some time. Yet at the same time, the mere thought of returning to the kind of existence he had led in France made him cringe.
Atkinson noted the faint shadow that had passed momentarily across Logan’s face. “I do have something in mind for you,” he said. “After a long time of recuperation. It’s an extremely vital job in the intelligence effort, and one which I think you’ll be perfectly suited for with your firsthand experience. Of course it would be up to you. I think you’ve earned some say in your next assignment.”
“What did you have in mind, sir?”
“We desperately need instructors in our training program, Logan, and I think you’d have a great deal to offer the chaps just starting out. What do you say?”
Logan grinned, both relieved and honored.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I gladly accept the offer.”
Notwithstanding Arnie’s crestfallen face, they all shook hands warmly before Logan set about making his report of his time in France.
When he left an hour later, it was with a sense that his sacrifices over the last year, the emotional and physical pain he had undergone, had not been wasted. He had served his country, if not with great distinction, yet with integrity and virtue. He knew at last he could stand with pride alongside his Stonewycke ancestor, old Digory MacNab.
79
A Bittersweet Christmas
Never had the somber gray walls of Stonewycke, with snow now piled up against them, seemed more like home to Logan as they did that Christmas of 1942. How good it was to be back! He knew now—in a deeper way than ever—what it meant to be part of something greater than himself—a cause, a family, a faith. He knew they were worth the sacrifice of commitment, the surrendering of his whole self.
He stood by the crackling blaze in the hearth of the family room, watching as Allison strung the last bit of tinsel on the tree.
It was a somber holiday season. There had been great suffering and deep griefs. Alec was still in Africa. Ian had managed to obtain a furlough, but would not be home until the first week in January. May’s presence—home from her studies in the States to announce her engagement to a young American law student—added a spark of gaiety to the festivities. Yet the joy pervading the small gathering at Stonewycke that Christmas Eve could not help but be of a rather quiet kind.
Logan saw the contrast most visibly on Allison’s face. The outward show of Christmas happiness could not keep an occasional tear from trickling down her cheek. He walked over and placed an arm around her waist. Despite the trembling of her lips, she smiled up at him.
“She always used to grab at the tinsel,” she said, “because it was so sparkling and pretty.”
“I suppose this time of year will always be the most difficult.” Logan knew she spoke of their daughter.
“Last year, in London, it was just the two of us, you were gone. It was such a sad, bleak time. But we decorated the tree, and . . . oh, Logan, if only I’d known it would be our last Christmas together!” Allison stifled a sob.
Logan gently stroked her hair while holding her tenderly.
“I have thought often of the gospel story and of Mary since then,” Allison finally went on. “The moment her son was born was a time of joy mixed with sorrows too. Losing our daughter has helped me understand maybe a little of what she felt in her heart. What does it say in Luke? ‘Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.’ She knew the true meaning of bittersweet joy. I am so happy that you are alive, Logan, and that we are at last together. Yet I cannot help feeling sad also.”
“I know,” said Logan gently. “There is something about Christmas that always brings out the extremes of feeling, the happiness that is, the memories of what was.”
“Will it always be so?”
“Right now our wounds are still raw and tender. But one day, Ali, we will be able to lift up each precious memory of our dear little Joanna, and those visions of her will be to us the pure joy that God intended. God doesn’t mind a little sorrow for a season. But we mustn’t allow our grief to force us to abandon those memories.”
“It’s just so hard, especially when I remember her smiling, happy face.”
“I know, dear,” replied Logan. “But you have to remember, we do not live in this world only. She is alive. God has chosen us for a great honor. For those who have lost a son or daughter can feel, in ways we cannot know except through such loss, part of the enormity of what God did in allowing His Son to die. Even in our sadness, and in your mother’s grief over Nat, we are able to partake in the divine grief of the universe—the shedding of God’s blood for the sins of mankind. It is a privilege to know that kind of heartache, and then be able to give it up to His care.”
“You’re right, Logan. Where did you get such wisdom?”
Logan laughed lightly. “I don’t know. I guess sorrow has a way of forcing people into greater understanding of things they can’t see when life is perfectly smooth. I don’t think God is as concerned with giving happy endings to our lives as He is forcing us into greater depths of laying down of self. For of course, that’s where true joy originates—not from surface happiness, but from giving ourselves up to Him. I suppose if there’s anything I’ve learned from this past year, it’s that. Begun to learn, I should say! I’m still such an infant, Allison, in trying to see from a new perspective.”
“Oh, Logan, I am thankful for what God is doing in our lives. But the growth can be so painful.”
“It usually is. Progress never comes without a struggle.”
“And I am thankful for you, Logan!”
At that moment Joanna came in carrying a tray of refreshments.
“I made some wassail for us to toast the season,” she said, setting the tray on a table and pouring portions of the punch into four glasses.
“Where’s May?” asked Logan.
“In the kitchen putting the finishing touches on some scones. She’ll be here in a minute.”
While they were waiting, Joanna walked toward the large window and stood looking out into the black night. Behind her the warm fire crackled cheerily, oblivious to the stormy winter night outside. Tiny white flakes of powdery snow swirled and danced against the darkened pane, collecting against the bottom corners of the windows. When she turned back toward the others, her face wore the same mixture of emotion Allison and Logan had been feeling.
“You know,” she said softly, “I haven’t felt much of a holiday spirit this year. It’s not been an easy time for any of us, these last months. But just now, as I was thinking, I remembered my first meal in this place. I suppose the fire reminded me of it, though it was in the old banquet hall. That was the day I first knew that Dorey was my grandfather.”
Joanna paused, and sighed deeply. Clearly the memory was filled with feelings of many kinds.
“Poor Dorey and Maggie were separated for over forty years,” Joanna went on. “Our heartaches can’t begin to compare with theirs. Yet look what kind of people they became in the end! Who wouldn’t want to radiate love like they each did? Yet the price is high. Suffering is often the price we have to pay for true joy . . . true compassion. They paid the price, and their characters reflected the result. I want God to do that kind of work in my heart too, yet I resist and complain just to
be separated from my dear husband for a year or two. Yes, I’ve lost a son, yet not really lost him—only given him back to God for a while.”
She stopped. Allison went to her.
“Oh, Mother,” she said, “you seem so strong to us. When I think of Lady Margaret’s faith, I think immediately of you, too.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Joanna, wiping a solitary tear from her eye. “You are a daughter to be proud of.—God, help us all to give ourselves to your work in our hearts!” The mother and daughter embraced warmly, while Logan silently looked on, his own tears rising.
All at once the door leading toward the kitchen burst open.
In walked May, a bright smile on her spunky twenty-year-old face. “The scones are ready!” she announced as she bore the wooden tray to the table. “Complete with fresh butter from the Cunningham farm, churned today, and the berry jam Mrs. Galbreath sent up from town!”
“Ah, May!” said Logan, “how glad we three are that you could come home to join us! What would Christmas be without scones . . . and at least one carefree face among us? Right, ladies?” he added, with a grin toward Allison and Joanna.
They laughed.
“Come,” said Joanna, “it is time to remember what the season is about.”
They each took their glasses and lifted them toward one another.
“To those,” said Logan, “whom we love who cannot be with us.”
“May the Lord bless them, one and all,” added May, “and give them peace.”
“Help us to remember them in prayer,” said Allison.
“And,” added Joanna, “may the new year see us together again! Thank you, Lord, for the birth of your Son!”
———
The new year was not to bring the kind of reunion Joanna had hoped for. The war was to rage on for nearly three more years.
There were, however, major Allied advances throughout 1943. By mid year the Allies controlled the Mediterranean and most of the major sea routes. Alec was able to spend a week in Scotland during the summer before being sent to a new assignment. Ian, now twenty-five, had to continue to postpone his university studies.
In September, Italy surrendered unconditionally, and in the following year, June of 1944, the long-awaited invasion of Europe finally took place. Many of Logan’s trainees played a vital role in preparing the way for the advance of troops which followed the landing. On August 24 the first Allies reached Paris, and the next day Charles de Gaulle drove through the city in an open car, to the wild cheering of thousands of Parisians. In the months that followed a million arrests were made in France of Nazi collaborators, with tens of thousands of summary executions. It would be many years before real peace would be restored to the torn nation.
The “thousand year Reich” finally collapsed in May of 1945, with Japan capitulating a few months later in the wake of the world’s first nuclear explosion on a massive scale.
Thus the glories of victory continued to be mingled with the ongoing horrors of war. But the millions of returning soldiers did not need newspaper accounts of the destruction of Hiroshima to remind them that the world was forever changed. They were changed men. Some were emotionally destroyed, some had allowed the experience to broaden them. Relationships had been forged which would never be forgotten. War had caused both strengths and weaknesses to surface. Most had grown, all had changed, and they well knew that the world they now faced was changed, too.
In Britain, the old ways, long slowly fading, were now all but gone. Though she had, almost single-handedly, kept back facism from taking over Europe in 1940, Britain would never again be the economic and military powerhouse she had been in the pre-war years. New alignments of power would soon emerge, which would change the political and military landscape of the twentieth century forever.
The post-war years would bring these new times, with their accompanying stresses, to the northern Scottish estate of Stonewycke as well. Though the soldiers returned, they did not bring with them a return to the world of the 1920’s. A new era had dawned.
80
Homecoming
A stiff sea breeze bent the purple heads of heather.
The sky shone blue and vivid, the air felt crisp and clean. The fishermen predicted a storm to blow in tomorrow, but today the shore and hills and fields were bright and welcome. The world was at peace.
Alec had arrived home the day before. For good! He had spent the evening getting reacquainted with his family and swapping tales with Logan. Now this morning one of the first things he had wanted to do was get out for a long walk with Joanna.
So today they would delight in the sunshine. And if the storm did come, they would enjoy it also. They were together again at their bonny Scottish home; a few drops of rain could not dampen their joy.
Alec clasped Joanna’s hand tightly as they crested the final hill on their way back to the ancient family home. Both waking and sleeping, during those long, lonely years in the desert and on other assignments, this very picture had dominated his dreams—his dear wife, the glorious hills of purple, the gray stone walls. He had held on to his loves of family and wife and home and country with such a passion that they were able to sustain him, though it sometimes seemed he could not bear to wake to the grim smell of heat and sand and battle.
“We’ll have to cancel our picnic tomorrow if it rains,” said Joanna, slightly out of breath after the climb.
“They’re sayin’ ’twill be a braw storm,” Alec replied, glancing toward the sea.
“Why, Alec MacNeil!” laughed Joanna, “I do believe you’re actually looking forward to it!”
He laughed with her. “After the Sahara, ye’ll ne’er catch me complainin’ aboot a wee drap o’ rain again!”
They paused to take in the view. The Strathy Valley spread out in lovely panorama before them. Though the summer was just past, like most of Scotland it remained a lush green, accented by the gently waving fields of golden grain, ripening for the soon-coming harvest. The little town of Port Strathy lay about two miles distant at the ocean’s edge, from which the shoreline spread out, curving slowly toward the jutting point of land in the hazy distance.
“I never tire of coming here,” said Joanna wistfully. “Just seeing the land, the valley, the little farms . . . it keeps me aware of our heritage. I don’t know exactly, but something in me doesn’t ever want to forget the past, the roots, those who came before. The legacy they left us is too important to let slip away as new generations come along.”
“Which is why ye’re so devoted t’ that journal o’ yers,” said Alec. “Ye probably added three or four hundred pages since I left fer the war.”
Joanna laughed. “Not quite that much, dear! But those long, lonely nights around here did give me plenty of time to work on it. I finished writing about my coming to Scotland, and meeting you, and all that happened then. Now I’m in the midst of trying to put everything Lady Margaret told me through the years into some kind of order. I’m rewriting her childhood from all the stories she gave me.”
“And ye still hae t’ tell aboot Dorey’s comin’, an’ their sad partin’.”
“Yes, not to mention all the years since, and the new generations. Our Ian’s at Oxford now. May’s engaged to her lawyer and planning to live in America. And Nat, now with the Lord, has left a legacy in the gentle spirit that will always be part of the ongoing heritage of the family. And Allison! Remember when I was so worried about her?”
“Aye, do I!”
“Her struggles before and during the war have caused such a growth and maturing in her. I see her really coming of age as the next heiress of Maggie’s legacy. How could I have ever doubted the Lord’s power to work in her life? And of course, who could forget her Logan!”
“Who indeed! What a blessed character o’ the Lord’s creation! I think he’ll always hae that foxy twinkle in his eye!”
“Oh, Alec, we are fortunate! God has been so good to us! And what stories there are still to tell about this family and this esta
te!”
“But tell me noo honestly, do ye think anyone’s gaein’ t’ read all ye’re writin’ besides yer lovin’ husband?”
“Oh, Alec,” exclaimed Joanna, “it hardly matters! Some stories just have to be told. Even if nobody reads them, they’re still important . . . to me! But of course, I’m writing it for the children . . . and their children—for future generations, so that they’ll remember the legacy of their ancestors. We mustn’t forget our roots, Alec!”
“An’ speakin’ o’ oor children an’ their husbands, an’ the stories they hae t’ tell, look who’s comin’ yon across the way.”
———
The warm breeze bringing the scent of ocean spray to the land had also beckoned to Allison and Logan; they had taken their way on horseback in the opposite direction from Allison’s parents. They had ridden south, across the desolate heath known as Braenock Ridge, down into the valley, through several meadows to the bank of the Lindow, then back across the valley, down through the ravine separating it from Stonewycke, up the other side, and were now walking their two horses across a wide moor toward the little summit on which Alec and Joanna stood observing them. Allison held both reins, listening to Logan who, as he walked, read from a letter received only that morning from Henri.
. . . life is so changed, mon ami, from the dark days of the Nazis. Our nation remains in much turmoil, but I have faith that what was always good in France has not been destroyed by the war and will emerge again. As for me, I am happy. My dear wife and children are with me once more, people are once again starting to think about reading, and as they do they are buying books. L’Escroc and L’Oiselet will now live only in memory. But rest assured, Logan, whom I will always think of as Michel, that my fondest memories of the war are of those times spent with you. As for the others, Antoine returned unharmed to France, Jean Pierre is still . . . well, he is still himself! Always with a cause, with people to help. Now he is trying to keep his brother from death because of his assistance to the Nazis! How the fortunes of time change the political landscape! Lise has gone to Israel. A new cause has ignited her passion, and now her dedication is bent on helping the many Jews released from concentration camps—including her sister—find new hope in Israel. I had a letter from her only last week. I can tell she is, if not yet quite content, at least happy for now. Claude I have lost track of. The last I was able to find out, he was in some difficulty with the authorities, some problem with the Russians, I believe. And you, my dear Michel—my apologies again! I must be growing old, I forget so quickly!—I almost forgot to congratulate you on your receiving of the Croix de Guerre. Now two medals, one from each country! You are indeed a hero of France, as I said you would be! . . . God be with you, mon ami!
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