Heathersleigh Homecoming

by Michael Phillips

  “Maybe you will even do better,” said Amanda innocently.

  Sister Hope cast her a look of question. “What can you possibly mean?” she asked.

  “You’ll feed her and keep her warm and protect her, just like when you found me all alone and took me in.”

  “You are hardly an orphan.”

  “But you are all loving me in ways my own parents didn’t,” Amanda replied. “So maybe it’s for the best. I know I feel more love here than I did at home. Maybe the baby goat will too.”

  Sister Hope spun around. Her face was red. Her eyes flashed with fire.

  “Don’t you ever consider us a replacement for the greatest gift God has given you!” she said sternly.

  Amanda scarcely recognized Hope’s voice.

  “I only said—”

  “I heard what you said well enough, Amanda! I will not—”

  Suddenly Sister Hope caught herself. She paused abruptly.

  Every sister’s eye was riveted on their mentor and older sister with astonishment at the outburst. Hope glanced from one to the other, around the room, speechless, suddenly realizing what she had done. Then just as suddenly she turned and hurried from the room.

  “What did I do?” said Amanda. “I meant to say something good.”

  “You hit a little close to home,” said Gretchen. “Certain things are very precious to Sister Hope’s heart, and parents are the most precious of all. It is the greatest shame she can feel to be told she is providing something for another that they ought instead to be getting from their mother and father.”

  “I meant nothing by it.”

  “Perhaps there was more in your words than you realize, Amanda. There have been those whom Sister Hope has asked to leave the chalet for just that reason. She wants one’s time here to be healing in the right way, not a replacement for home.”

  “But why would she send them away?” asked Amanda.

  “She sent them back to their parents.”

  “I have only seen her eyes flash like that once before in all the years I have known her,” said Marjolaine.

  “What caused it?” asked Luane, who had never seen such an outburst during her brief stay at the chalet.

  “We had a young lady with us,” answered Marjolaine, “probably in her early twenties. It appeared she was going to remain for some time. One day she said to Sister Hope, ‘My mother and I were not close. I could never feel as comfortable with her as I feel here. I don’t even think my mother is a Christian. Would it be all right if I called you Mother while I am here?’”

  “I remember the day well,” Gretchen nodded.

  “How did she answer?” asked Luane.

  “Her eyes and face lit into the closest thing to rage I have ever seen,” replied Marjolaine.

  “Righteous indignation, I would call it,” Gretchen added.

  “‘How dare you even think such a thing!’ she cried at the unsuspecting girl,” Marjolaine continued. “‘You have been given the most precious gift in all the world, whether or not your mother is a Christian. I will not have you cast that gift in the swine-pit of your youthful blindness. I would never usurp that most priceless of all relationships in the world.’

  “The girl stood stunned. Yet in a way it was her own fault, wouldn’t you say, Sister Gretchen? We had all spoken to her many times about her attitude toward her mother. But her heart was closed. She simply wouldn’t listen.”

  “I take it,” Luane asked, “that she did not remain long?”

  “‘I want you down the mountain and on a train home by tomorrow, young lady,’ Sister Hope said to her after she had calmed down. ‘I want you to go home and beg your mother’s forgiveness for your ungodly attitude toward her.’”

  “What happened?” Amanda now asked.

  “The young lady left. We never heard from her again,” Gretchen replied. “Not everyone appreciates Sister Hope’s bluntness at times, or is able to see the love that prompts it.”

  Ten minutes later Hope’s soft footsteps could be heard descending the stairs. She came back into the room and approached Amanda. Her face and eyes were red with remorse and weeping.

  “Amanda dear,” she said, taking Amanda in her arms. “I am so sorry! I should not have been so harsh. Please forgive me.”

  She sat down at the table and poured herself a cup of tea.

  “Do you remember when our conversation was diverted in other channels when we were walking back from Grindelwald?”

  Amanda nodded.

  “Perhaps now would be an appropriate time for me to tell you the rest of my own story. Certainly not to excuse my outburst—I would not do that. But what I have to say may at least in part explain it.”

  The other sisters remained seated around the large table. Sister Galiana, still holding the kid, walked into the spacious room and took a seat in front of the fireplace. Sister Anika followed her and replaced the first bottle of milk with a new warm one, then returned to the table.

  When everyone was situated comfortably, Sister Hope began.

  26

  Unexpected Origins

  You remember, I am sure,” Sister Hope began, “my telling you about going to the mission office in London, thinking I would be sent off immediately to some foreign land?”

  Again Amanda nodded.

  “After being, as I thought, rejected by the mission, I was so despondent,” Hope said. “I didn’t know what was to become of me. Although it was kind of the woman to offer, especially to a stray who had just walked in her door, I couldn’t imagine working at the mission office. I had no place to go, no place to stay, no friends in London. Well, there was one place I probably could have stayed, but I would sooner have slept on the streets than go back there.”

  “Why didn’t you just go home?” Amanda asked.

  A sad smile followed.

  “Home,” repeated Hope. “You speak as one who has a home. But what does one such as myself do, alone in London, her hopes of the mission field dashed . . . if she has no home to return to?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Amanda, confused.

  “Amanda dear,” said Sister Hope, “I was an orphan.”

  ————

  When the baby was brought to the Wigham Street Orphanage in London, not a soul was able to offer the slightest clue as to her origins. Nothing was known but that a child had been left on the doorstep of the parish church of Bromley, whose vicar contacted the administrators of the institution and arranged for them to take her.

  Inquiries were made, of course. All of Bromley heard of it, and many were the theories that circulated, some even attributing the child to wayward royal stock.

  Eventually word began to spread that there was nothing either so mysterious or sinister about the affair. The rumor had it that the child’s father had long since left England for wars in unknown parts and was presumed dead, and that the mother herself had not survived the night of birth. The baby’s aunt, who already had more mouths to feed than she could afford, took the child to the church. A note was pinned to the dirty blanket in which she was wrapped with four words scrawled in a nearly illegible hand, no doubt the final dying request from one who had none: Her name is Hope.

  Certain facts of the case corroborated the evidence. The vicar himself allowed that it was the most credible of all the stories that had been put forward, though nothing more was ever learned of the unknown aunt, or where the story had originated.

  That she was an orphan was all but certain. No additional facts ever came to light. The vicar himself, an elderly gentleman, was gone to his final reward before the youngster was old enough to make inquiries herself. The aunt never surfaced. Eventually the incident was all but forgotten in Bromley.

  The life of an orphan in 1870s London was neither an easy nor a pleasant one. But the fortunes of those girls who chanced to reside at Wigham Street were especially bitter. There was scarcely enough gruel provided to keep them alive, their labor was arduous, the bottom of a glass could not be seen thro
ugh the drinking water, rats swarmed the place, which in winter was hardly warm enough to keep the insects in the walls alive, and no adult supervision prevented cruelties innumerable from being meted out on the young and helpless. Many were the nights its more pitiful inhabitants wept and shivered themselves to sleep. They lived not merely without hope, but without hope of ever having hope.

  No worse hell could have been imagined for its inmates, and no socialist idealism of forward-thinking liberal politicians in Whitehall could ameliorate its multifold agonies.

  In afteryears, Hope’s only specific memory, because it recurred with such terrifying regularity, was that of lying awake at night, long after dark when everyone else was asleep, hearing scratching sounds in the walls. Gradually the noises came closer. As night deepened, the rats became bolder and bolder. Presently their busy feet could be heard scurrying all about the floor searching for crumbs of food. It sounded like an army of rats, even under her own bed.

  Wide awake, she shivered under a thin blanket, hiding her head under it and drawing her feet up inside at the bottom of her sparse nightgown as best she could for fear the creatures would climb up the endposts and nibble on her toes.

  She did not think to pray, like Annie in Bruce’s garret, for pussy to come. The only cat little Hope was acquainted with was a mean and mangy alley tom who hated little girls as much as he did rats, and had left far more claw marks on the arms of the unsuspecting girls of the place than ever had the rats’ teeth on their toes. So as she lay praying against the rats, she prayed just as desperately against Tom’s appearance.

  There was no salvation from the terror other than the long, slow approach of dawn, which usually resulted in the rats’ disappearance and her own drifting off to sleep—a sleep rudely interrupted with a vigorous shaking and a volley of gruff orders not to sleep the day away.

  It was a wonder she slept at all. Yet she did not get enough sleep upon such occasions to avoid getting drowsy at her afternoon work and sometimes falling asleep altogether. Such an occurrence always resulted in an awakening even more cross than the morning’s, accompanied by a box on the ear by the female warden of the prison.

  Hope grew from a baby to a child. Somehow she survived to become a girl of thirteen. She was one of the few who managed not to be completely embittered by the place, survived by keeping to herself, and, miraculously, somehow kept hoping that a better life would come to her when she was older.

  How, she couldn’t imagine. But she refused to let the dreams of something better die altogether. Even as a child, her name began to send roots down into the soil of that intrinsic desire toward goodness which has been implanted into every man and woman, but which so many allow to become hard and incapable of sustaining life. Thus did character begin to grow.

  Thinking that perhaps her salvation had come, at thirteen she was moved to a girls’ home in Birmingham. And it was indeed in certain ways an improvement over Wigham Street. Fires were warmer during the winter months, food slightly more plentiful, rats thankfully less so. But girls of seventeen are equally adept at inflicting cruelty on timid girls of thirteen as her elders had been in London.

  Her misery therefore deepened. Where she had allowed herself to hope she might have friends, she now had none. Compassion, however, is a commodity infused into the human character by suffering. Little did young Hope know that she was being prepared even now for that highest calling of mankind and womankind—the giving of cups of cold water to a thirsty humanity. Caverns of compassion were being carved out within her, even as she cried herself to sleep, praying, after what fashion she was capable, for her tormentors.

  But whereas her salvation had not come at thirteen, as she supposed, it did in fact arrive during her nineteenth year. She and several other of the girls were given permission to attend the tent meeting of a renowned revivalist being held within walking distance of the home. None were particularly interested, but any excuse to get away from the place for an evening was seized upon.

  Her companions sat snickering at the preaching. But nineteen-year-old Hope’s heart was seized with something the likes of which she had never known. Hope indeed now arose within her breast, hope of new life.

  Only a week later she was on her way back to London by train, a place in which she had hoped never to set foot again. But now she had purpose and vision.

  She was going to London to be a missionary!

  Alas, it was too lofty a dream, and its shattering therefore all the more painful. As she walked the streets after leaving the Baptist Missionary Society, unconsciously her steps took her in the direction of Wigham Street.

  An hour later she stood outside the orphanage where she had spent thirteen bleak and dismal years, gazing up at the stark grey stone walls, hearing an occasional shout or shriek or wail of pain from inside, knowing well what misery stalked its floors. She made sure she kept out of sight. The last thing she wanted was to be seen by someone who might recognize her. So many painful memories were hid behind those walls. She hated the place, yet it was one of the only two homes she had ever known.

  Full of thoughts and emotions too deep and painful to think about, slowly she turned and began walking away. She had no place to go other than away from the Wigham Street Orphanage. She would sooner sleep in a deserted alley than seek refuge there.

  Tears came. She could neither prevent them nor stop their flow. Her thoughts began to return to the lady she had spoken with at the mission board office. Unconsciously her steps turned again in that direction.

  “I will try to be willing, Lord,” she prayed. “I will do whatever you want me to . . . but I hate London! Isn’t there someplace you could use me? Anyplace but here!”

  It was late in the afternoon when Mrs. Weldon looked up again from her desk and saw the same young woman standing before her from earlier. It was obvious she had been crying.

  “Hello, my dear,” she said.

  “I . . . I have nowhere to go,” said Hope, her eyes filling with tears. “I have decided to take the job you told me about. I don’t have any training, like you said earlier, for anything—for being a missionary or anything else. But if you’ll show me what to do, I will do my best.”

  Mrs. Weldon’s heart smote her with tenderness toward the poor girl. She rose and approached.

  “But I’m sorry,” Hope went on, “I have no place to stay. I spent all my money just getting here. I was so sure that I would be able to . . .”

  She glanced away.

  “I understand, dear,” said Mrs. Weldon, placing her two hands on Hope’s shoulders. Suddenly her heart was strangely warmed to this nineteen-year-old waif who wanted to be a missionary.

  “—you will come home with me tonight,” she added.

  Hope never forgot that simple gesture of hospitality, nor what a ministry was involved in a simple kind word to a lonely heart, especially when accompanied by a roof overhead, a warm meal, and a bed in which to spend the night.

  ————

  The chalet fell silent.

  After a moment or two, Amanda rose, walked around the corner of the table, leaned down, and wrapped her arms about Sister Hope, who opened her arms and returned the embrace.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Amanda. “I had no idea. I didn’t mean to hurt you by what I said earlier.”

  “Nor I you, Amanda dear. Thank you.”

  27

  At Sea

  A set of eyes hidden behind two cylinders of glass peered across the sea below.

  From this vantage point high above the plateau on which the lighthouse was situated, their owner could make out the small convoy of five British vessels clearly enough. It looked like two standard cruisers, a battle cruiser, and two light cruisers.

  No U-boats were in the vicinity. There was nothing to do but report the activity at the earliest possible opportunity. He could tell nothing of the destination of the five ships, though from intelligence reports that had come last week, he suspected the Mediterranean.

  It would be
useful if he could make positive identification of the vessels. These binoculars, however, weren’t quite powerful enough.

  He rose and walked across the small enclosure at the top of the tower. He would use the telescope.

  As the HMS Dauntless steamed southward through the North Sea in the dawn hours of the second week of November of the year 1914, Sir Charles Rutherford of Heathersleigh in Devonshire could have no idea toward what fate his destiny was carrying him. Nor could he possibly realize to what an extent the fortunes of his older daughter, as well as his own, were bound up in the isolated stretch of England’s eastern coastline they were now passing, from which their movements were being watched by his onetime colleague and friend Chalmondley Beauchamp. Indeed, had Beauchamp’s eye been focused with pinpoint accuracy at this moment, he might have decried his former friend, whom the Fountain had not been as successful at recruiting as they had he himself, on deck at the bow of the lead cruiser, gazing ahead thoughtfully in the chill morning air. Commander Rutherford had noticed the unlit lighthouse onshore surrounded by a small cluster of buildings as he walked across the deck a few moments earlier. But he thought nothing of it.

  Though Charles’ brain was unaware of his fleeting proximity to the Fountain of Light’s Yorkshire beachhead for its clandestine spy operation, his heart felt strange stirrings as they went.

  Something told him that a dawn in his daughter’s life was at hand, that years of prayers were about to strike root within her heart in more direct ways, and possibly had already begun.

  Spontaneous prayer often arose within him for Amanda. But for some time it had been accompanied with heaviness of heart that no attempt to drum up praise and thankfulness had been able to combat.

  They had been praying for so long, with no visible or apparent change. Faith on Amanda’s behalf had become a commodity more and more difficult for him to come by as the years progressed, and nearly impossible since her letter of less than two months ago. The enormous satisfaction and thankfulness and personal friendship he felt with George and Catharine only deepened the discouragement he felt whenever he remembered their sister. If only, Charles could not help thinking, she could be with them now, during these wonderful years of young adulthood, to relish in and benefit from the maturing bonds of family relationship each of the other two enjoyed with him and Jocelyn. Even if Amanda came back someday, she had already missed so much of what the rest of them would treasure all their lives. Thought of it could make him weep. She had sacrificed so much on the fleeting altar of youthful independence.