Wayward Winds

by Michael Phillips

  Amanda obeyed.

  “—and imagine yourself out in the middle of a wide, flat moor.”

  He waited a moment.

  “Can you picture it?”

  “I think so,” she replied.

  “All right . . . now come with me.”

  He reached out his hand. She took it, and they continued forward.

  After another ten or fifteen paces, only yards in front of their feet the grass ended abruptly at a sheer cliff dropping some five or six hundred feet straight down to the water’s edge. The earth seemed to give way utterly. As if appearing from out of nowhere at the end of the bluff, the vast blue of the sea stretched out as an infinity far before them.

  Amanda gasped. Her hand tightened on Ramsay’s.

  “Don’t worry,” he laughed as they stopped. “It’s not quite a straight drop. There are several precipices and juts to catch you if you fall.”

  “Don’t say such a thing!” said Amanda, still struggling to catch her breath and steady her quivering knees.

  They waited a few moments, then once more Halifax urged Amanda gently forward.

  “Believe me, there is nothing to fear,” he said.

  They reached the edge. She now saw that indeed the edge was not exactly a perpendicular drop-off, but that the surface gave way to the white cliff below them by degrees.

  They sat down, legs over the grassy incline, and remained several long minutes in silence.

  Far below and to the right, the city of Folkestone stretched away from the water’s edge toward the inland hills. Ships and boats of all sizes came and went from its harbor. Smoke drifted lazily upward from its red and grey rooftops. Forward, their gaze met only blue, broken by a few clouds in the distance. Closer by, seagulls played on the gentle breezes. Their shrill cries and the occasional distant drone of a ship’s horn were the only sounds to meet their ears.

  “Oh, Ramsay—it’s breathtaking!” exclaimed Amanda. “I’ve seen the Channel many times, but never like this.”

  “Imagine it on a stormy day. The coastline can be wild too.”

  “Do you come here on such days? I would think you would be afraid.”

  “I come here in all weather. I love the sea during a fierce storm, with the wind howling and waves shooting up off the rocks.”

  “I can see why you say it is one of your favorite places. How did you discover it?”

  “Just the way you and I did today,” he replied. “I was driving along here one day and decided I wanted to have a look at the Channel. I walked away from the road. Suddenly I found myself at the edge of the world, with this stupendous view stretching out in front of me.”

  “It is wonderful—now that my heart is out of my throat and back where it belongs!”

  Halifax laughed. “Part of the magic of the place is that there is a little danger associated with it,” he said. “But do you know why else I enjoy it here?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I consider it a significant spot—perhaps one of the most significant places in all England.”

  “Significant?” repeated Amanda. “I’m not sure I understand you.”

  “Look there,” said Ramsay, pointing with his arm out across the Channel in a southeasterly direction.

  “I see nothing but water.”

  “Squint—way off there in the distance . . . can you see it?”

  “All I can . . . oh yes—I do see land. I thought those were clouds on the horizon.”

  “It takes a clear day, one like this. But that is the coastline of France you’re looking at, from Cap Gris Nez to Calais.”

  “How far is it across?”

  “Twenty-two miles from Dover, probably twenty-three or twenty-four from here.”

  “It’s not that far really, is it?”

  “Far enough to have kept England and the European continent separated since 1066. Twenty-two miles of water is better than a thousand miles of open terrain. No European general or dictator in nine centuries has been able to conquer that twenty-two miles.”

  “So why do you call this a significant place?” asked Amanda.

  “Because at this exact spot, like no other I know of, you can see just how narrow the Channel really is. Now that the modern age has come, that distance will shrink all the more.”

  “Shrink—what do you mean?”

  “Like the motorcar,” Ramsay replied, nodding his head back toward where his Rolls was parked. “Look at us—today we’ve gone from London to Hastings, here to Folkestone, and we’ll both be sleeping in our own beds back in London again tonight. We’ve toured nearly all southeastern England in a day! We could never have done such a thing thirty years ago. Industry and transportation, progress and invention—they’re changing everything, Amanda. The motorcar is just the beginning—aeroplanes will fill the sky before we know it. You shall no doubt ride in one someday.”

  “Now you’re sounding too much like my father,” said Amanda, with disinterested feminine scorn. “He always used to talk about such things.”

  “My stepfather spoke well of your father once or twice in my hearing.”

  “Your . . . stepfather?” said Amanda.

  “Lord Halifax—he died two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He was old—a genial enough man. But he and I were not especially close.”

  “But you—”

  “My mother married him when I was a boy. She wanted me to take his name. But all that’s in the past. I’m more excited about the future,” Ramsay went on enthusiastically. “I tell you, Amanda, aeroplanes will fly over this Channel within a very short time, back and forth from England to the Continent, as if this narrow stretch of sea doesn’t even exist. Mark my words, the time is coming when England will no longer remain separate from the Continent as it has for centuries. More and more will our fortunes and our future be bound up with those of France and Germany and Austria-Hungary, and even Russia.”

  The sound of the word “Russia” sent a chill up Amanda’s spine. Even though its royal families were intricately related, and their two nations had generally been friendly enough, the huge colossus at the eastern edge of Europe remained full of dark mystery in her ears. It was difficult to imagine modern and progressive England having to do with an ancient eastern power ruled by tsars.

  “France and England might draw closer,” she said, almost with a shudder, “but Russia seems too remote and different and far away.”

  “Russia is England’s ally now,” said Halifax. “It’s a changing world. Change is happening on the Continent more rapidly than most English realize. Especially in Russia. Forces are at work there that very few understand, even though socialism began right here in England. Conflict is coming, and England will not be able to avoid being drawn into it.”

  The talk of changing times unsettled Amanda. She could not have said why. Though she prided herself on being part of the avant garde, she was uncomfortable when events moved beyond her capacity to influence or understand them. Women’s rights were one thing. Alliances with Russia were another. She didn’t like the sound of it.

  “Why are the cliffs white?” she asked at length.

  “The rock here is mostly chalk.”

  Again it was quiet. Halifax glanced down at his watch. “Almost four-thirty. It’s probably time we thought about getting you back to the city. We don’t want Mrs. Pankhurst upset with me.”

  He rose, took Amanda’s hand, and pulled her to her feet and safely away from the cliff. She sighed deeply, taking one last gaze up and down the coast. They turned and walked back to the car.

  “Emmeline won’t worry about me,” said Amanda. “She’s not my mother, after all. She lets me do as I please.”

  12

  Two Fathers

  Charles Rutherford and his twenty-two-year-old son George, home for a weekend visit during his final term at Oxford, were busily stringing wire in the second floor of the north wing of Heathersleigh Hall, the last portion of the great stone mansion yet to be
outfitted with electricity. As happy as he was for his son’s education, it was always a boon to the father’s spirits to have him home, even if briefly.

  Both were eagerly anticipating the summer months. Already plans were being laid between them for the completion of the electrical project, as well as the installation of a telephone at the Hall. Charles’ work on the prime minister’s commission allowed him not only to keep pace with developments elsewhere in the country, but to have a hand in directing them as well. As more and more electrical and telephone lines were strung outward from London, Charles’ dreams were being fulfilled almost more rapidly than he had dared imagine.

  George came bounding down the stairs from the attic.

  “What would you think, Father,” he said, “of running a line up into the garret?”

  “A little soon for that, isn’t it, George?” replied Charles, looking up from where he sat on the floor pulling a length of wire through the hole he had recently bored from the other side of the wall. “We haven’t even finished the main house yet.”

  “I know. But I want to have light operational up there later this summer. I found a spot where I can drill down easily through the floor and connect with the junction we made this morning between the library and the armory. The wire will hardly be seen. Then the current will be in the garret when we’re ready to install lights.”

  Charles laughed. “You seem to have thought it through. Sure, go ahead, George.”

  “Thanks, Father!”

  “If I need you, I’ll pound on the ceiling with Morse code!”

  George turned and hurried back to his project. Charles watched him go with a pleased smile. As the last words of his son continued to sound in his brain, gradually the smile faded and his thoughts turned reflectively toward his second child.

  Neither did the last words she had spoken to him ever leave his thoughts. He would not forget them should he live to be five hundred years old.

  “I have no respect left for either of you,” she had said. “I can’t say there is much feeling left in my heart for anyone around here. I hate it here. I have hated it for years.” Then had followed the letter which, at least for the present, had ended hope of relationship in the near future. “I am not interested in your God,” she had written, “in your prayers, or in either of you.”

  The letter had come two and a half years ago. Yet to a sensitive nature like Charles Rutherford’s, the words plunged anew every day like a knife blade into his father’s heart.

  What a contrast between the two—George who loved him and embraced his role in his life, and Amanda who found all thought of parental supervision hateful and confining. He had been the same father to them both, thought Charles. What could account for the difference?

  Will Amanda ever want to call me father again? he sighed. Will the very word always be hateful to her, or will she one day soften to the idea of someone above her to whom she can be a daughter?

  With the thought, prayer was not far behind.

  Amanda had asked him not to pray for her. But that was one request with which he could not, and would not, comply.

  “O God, Father of us all,” Charles groaned inwardly where he sat, “though her mind is set against all reminder of it, stir Amanda’s heart toward daughterhood. Probe and prick her in the deep places of her being where we are all children, because we were made to be children—your children. Help her to warm to the idea of your Fatherhood, though her brain may resist for yet a season. Take away the hate, the bitterness, the resentment that somehow has come to reside in her as a result of my influence in her life.”

  As he prayed, the imagery of growing things came into his mind, as it often did when he and Jocelyn prayed for their children, as had been their custom for years, in the heather garden next to the wood east of the Hall.

  “Till the soil of Amanda’s heart, Lord,” he now prayed. “Send your warming sun upon it. Break up the frozen ground of her independence. Though the thought of me remains odious to her, though perhaps she does not want to call me father, turn her heart toward your Fatherhood. And I am not, after all, her true father, Lord. You only gave her to me for a little while, to help her become your daughter. Forgive my inadequacy to the task. It would seem I have failed both her and you, Lord God. Yet I know you did not expect me to be a perfect father, only one who sought to obey you. I began late to do so, which is my life’s deepest regret, and even now I do so but feebly.”

  Charles paused and sighed at the reminder of his shortcomings as a father.

  “You are the only perfect Father,” he prayed again, “and you will yet be that perfect Father to our dear Amanda. You will take up my imperfect fatherhood into your plan for her, and use it in your miraculous way to perfect Amanda’s daughterhood in you. Carry out that work, heavenly Father—not only in Amanda, but also in George, in Catharine, in Jocelyn . . . and in me. Turn my heart, too, more and more toward your Fatherhood. Create ever more deeply in me the longing to be a child. Make me more fully your obedient and thankful son.”

  13

  An Invitation

  Life with the Pankhursts rarely lacked for excitement.

  Visitors came almost daily for information, interviews, and business. Passersby came to heckle. Still others just stared into the windows of the home where dwelt the radical women firebrands.

  But mostly the excitement came from Emmeline Pankhurst’s activities themselves. Her most favored method in the women’s campaign was to push the limits of the law so as to make news for the cause. Every day the possibility existed that Emmeline might not return home for tea, or even for bed that night.

  Enough stories circulated about Mrs. Pankhurst, exaggerated by the London press, to keep public curiosity at a high pitch. The demonized drawings in the papers made people want to see her for themselves.

  The perceptions created in the papers were not actually so far from the truth. Emmeline Pankhurst was passionately obsessed with the suffragette movement. It was the sole topic of conversation at every meal. The guests who appeared for tea were either new recruits or prospective donors to the cause. In the household in which Amanda Rutherford had cast her fate, women’s rights dominated every moment, every breath, every waking thought.

  Mornings she and the others folded and prepared leaflets and placards. Afternoons they distributed their wares, marching, speaking, protesting, and otherwise appearing around the city to make the cause known to wider numbers. Once or twice a month they gathered in front of the Houses of Parliament while the M.P.s arrived for the day’s session, bullying and badgering to cajole the lawmakers to listen to their pleas.

  At first the involvement in something that seemed so important thrilled Amanda. It was a new and exciting life. She had always dreamed of living in London. Now here she was in the very middle of it. Yet though outwardly she despised her upbringing and everything her parents stood for, she could not erase the good breeding she had received. In spite of what she tried to tell herself, there were times she found herself balking at the unladylike things the cause required. She did her best to convince herself that she would eventually get accustomed to the boisterous, rude, and radical behavior.

  The invitation arrived at the Pankhurst home a week after Amanda’s outing with Ramsay Halifax between Hastings and Dover. Its words were simple enough, but they would change her life.

  “Amanda,” called out Sylvia from below, “—Amanda, come downstairs! A messenger is here for you.”

  In surroundings where Emmeline Pankhurst was a woman of national reputation, Amanda could not imagine what a messenger could possibly want with her. She hurried downstairs thinking to herself that there must be some tragic news. Sylvia and Christabel stood waiting at the front door in anticipation. Outside a young man in top hat and tails held an envelope and the thornless stem of a peach-hued rose.

  “You are Miss Rutherford?” he said.

  Amanda nodded.

  He handed her both envelope and flower, then turned without another word, an
d strode across the brick walk to a waiting single-horse carriage. Within moments he had disappeared down the street. Amanda stared bewildered after him.

  “Well . . . open it!” said Christabel impatiently.

  The words brought Amanda to her senses. With trembling finger she tore at one edge of the envelope, then pulled out a single sheet from inside. She took a deep breath and read:

  To: Miss Amanda Rutherford

  Amanda,

  I would be pleased if you would do me the honor of accepting an invitation to accompany me to the Derby and the Reception that follows. The race is scheduled for Saturday next, the eighth, at two o’clock in the afternoon. Unless I hear otherwise, I shall call for you at eleven.

  Yours cordially,

  Ramsay Halifax, Esq.

  Amanda handed her the card. Christabel scanned it quickly.

  “Who is he?” Christabel asked excitedly.

  “Someone I met at the Kensington Lawn Tea—the man who was at Hastings, remember. I came home with him.”

  “A good-looking man too! Will you accept, Amanda?”

  “Of course,” replied Amanda, heart pounding. “How could I turn down an invitation like this!”

  “The Derby is one of the premier events of the social season,” said Sylvia. “Not that I care about such things, but some people do. If Mother received an invitation like that, she would probably smuggle in a piece of dynamite and throw it onto the track before the race!”

  “I plan to enjoy myself,” laughed Amanda.

  Already her girlish enthusiasm was mounting. Nothing like this ever happened at the Pankhursts.’ Nothing like this ever happened to her. All of a sudden women’s suffrage seemed unimportant and far away.

  “In fact,” she added with a giggle, “I think I will go to Harrods this very afternoon. I simply must find a new dress!”

  “Oh, but Harrods is too expensive.”

  “Money is no object!” rejoined Amanda. “I can’t be seen in rags for such an occasion!”

  “Rags—what are you talking about? You have beautiful dresses.”