Heathersleigh Homecoming

by Michael Phillips

  Amanda was introduced to some she did not know, and many she only faintly remembered.

  “Amanda, you remember Gresham Mudgley . . .” said her mother. A simply clad man, with an unruly crop of grey hair coming out all around the edges of his cap, and with the faint odor of sheep’s wool about him, drew near.

  “Why, the girl is grown into a lovely lady,” said Mudgley, with a tip of his hat and offering his hand.

  “Hello, Mr. Mudgley. It is nice to see you again,” replied Amanda with a pleasant smile, shaking the sheepherder’s rough offered hand and remembering with a stab of conscience the comment she had once made to her father about him.

  “Oh, and I want you to meet Sally Osborne—” said Jocelyn, turning away from Mudgley toward a beaming red-faced woman holding the hand of a chubby three-year-old at her side. “—and this little fellow is her son Hadwin.”

  “I am happy to meet you, Mrs. Osborne,” said Amanda. She knelt down and smiled at the little boy. “Good morning, Hadwin.”

  As she stood, Amanda now noticed a man at Mrs. Osborne’s side holding an exact replica of the same little boy. The look of astonishment on her face was plain to see.

  “And this is Andrew Osborne and Gildan,” said her mother.

  “Hello,” said Amanda, glancing back and forth between their two boys.

  “—as you can see, Sally and Andrew are the proud parents of twin sons.”

  “Now I understand,” laughed Amanda. “I thought I was seeing double!”

  The press of the crowd and the constant greetings and handshakes and smiles almost reminded Amanda of being in London again. She had never been in the midst of such a gathering—so friendly and warm, like a huge family.

  As she was turning back and forth between the twins, all at once in the background she saw two familiar figures approaching. But how changed they were!

  “Agatha, good morning!” exclaimed Jocelyn.

  “Oh, Jocelyn,” said the other, hugging her emotionally, “I am so sorry!”

  “Thank you, but this has been a good day. It is healing to hear how much Charles was loved.—Amanda, you remember Agatha Blakeley—”

  “Yes. Good morning, Mrs. Blakeley.”

  Amanda swallowed hard as she glanced nervously to the man at her side.

  “—and her husband, Rune.”

  “Hello, Mr. Blakeley,” Amanda added, shaking Rune Blakeley’s hand.

  “Good day to you, Miss Amanda,” he returned, then hesitated. He did not move away but shuffled for a few seconds back and forth on his feet. He obviously had something else he wanted to say.

  “I don’t know if you recollect the day, Miss Amanda,” he said after an awkward moment, “when you and your mum was in the village and I’d been treating my Stirling a mite rough, and you ran up in a huff.”

  Amanda nodded with an embarrassed smile.

  “I been wantin’ to apologize to you for years for my rudeness that day,” he said. “The drink did mighty bad things to me back in them days, and I got your own father and mother to thank for helping me get over it. Many a time your papa sat up most of the night with me. There was times I’d yell at him like I done you. I’m embarrassed to say that I tried to hit him once or twice too, I got so mad. But your papa was a shrewd one. I never could so much as lay a hand on him. I suspect he could have laid me out on the floor with one blow. He was a strong man, and nimble on his feet. But he was always gentle and forgiving, and never held any of that against me. He just kept being patient with me till I got over it. And now here I am, and I got him and your mum to thank. But I was terrible mean to you on that day, Miss Amanda, and it would do this heart of mine a heap of good if you’d say you forgive me for what I said that day.”

  Amanda’s heart was stung by the man’s simple apology. His spirit, in the midst of the acknowledgment of his sin, was like that of a child.

  “Of course, Mr. Blakeley,” Amanda said. “Of course I forgive you. But I should ask the same of you. I was just as insensitive myself, and I’m afraid I said some rather unkind things to my mother about you afterward. I too apologize.”

  “Think nothing more about it, miss. You were just a child. I was a grown man and should have known better.”

  “How is Stirling?”

  “He’s away at university, Miss Amanda—at Oxford,” replied Mrs. Blakeley.

  “That’s wonderful,” said Amanda. “I am so happy to hear of it. He must be a grown man by now.”

  “He still walks with his limp,” his mother said, “but he’s a good strong lad. He and your brother, George, were the best of friends.”

  “Your father was always real good to him too,” added Rune.

  “Tell Stirling hello for me next time you write him, will you please?” said Amanda.

  “You could say the same to your sister,” replied Agatha. “Stirling and Catharine have been writing since he left.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. Just the same, I would appreciate your telling him too.”

  “We will indeed,” Agatha said.

  A jab in Amanda’s ribs from Catharine turned Amanda again in another direction, where she was now as shocked as her sister to see Gwendolen Powell and her mother walking toward them. They had not seen them during the service.

  “Hello, Amanda, Catharine,” said Gwendolen, with a pleasant tone and far more gracious expression than Catharine in particular would have given her credit for being able to display. “I am so sorry about your father and George.”

  “Thank you,” Catharine replied.

  “I heard you were back, Amanda,” Gwendolen said. “It has been a long time. I don’t think I would have recognized you.”

  “Nor I you,” Amanda smiled. “Are we both getting to that age where we start talking about the years flying by?”

  “I hope not,” Gwendolen replied with a laugh. “I do not want to relinquish my youth quite yet.”

  She paused as she looked momentarily at both girls with an unexpectedly shy expression.

  “I . . . I would be happy to have you visit me,” she said after a moment. “Anytime.”

  “Thank you, Gwendolen,” said Amanda. “Perhaps we shall ride over this week.”

  “I would like that very much,” rejoined Gwendolen.

  “We are all very, very sorry,” now said Mrs. Powell, shaking Jocelyn’s hand. “Your husband was highly thought of in all of Devon.”

  “Thank you, Lady Holsworthy, that is very kind of you.”

  Mother and daughters turned to leave and were soon on their way home.

  “What are you doing, Amanda?” said Catharine when they were alone a moment later. “I don’t know that I am interested in going to visit Gwendolen Powell.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I never cared that much for her. And what if Hubert is around?”

  “I thought you told me he was married and getting fat.”

  “Maybe so, but the idea of visiting Holsworthy Castle is not one I find appealing.”

  “Can’t you tell Gwendolen is lonely?”

  “Lonely!” exclaimed Catharine in a loud whisper.

  “It is written all over her face, Catharine. She’s hungry for friendship—there’s nothing so sinister in that. And I think I shall go visit her.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Amanda, “but I felt sorry for her.”

  117

  A Mystery Revealed

  After the service and greeting time finally broke up, Timothy boarded the train in Milverscombe to return to London. Jocelyn, the two girls, and Maggie climbed into Charles’ Peugeot and drove back to Heathersleigh. The three Rutherford women then walked Maggie home to her cottage.

  The sun shone warm and bright and they chatted freely as they went, feeling the beginning of a new day in their spirits. Laughter more easily escaped their lips, especially from the two sisters who, in reacquainting themselves as young adult women, were quickly becoming the best of friends. T
hough Jocelyn’s smile remained tinged with sadness, for the first time since the tragedy she found it possible to breathe in deeply of the fresh warm air without reservation.

  “This was an extraordinary day,” Amanda said as they went. “After the service was over, no one wanted to leave. There was such a wonderful . . . I don’t know what to call it—such a feeling of oneness, like the whole community was one big family. Was it all because of Daddy and George and people wanting to talk about them?”

  “There were a few more present than usual, I think,” Jocelyn replied.

  “But it is like that every Sunday,” added Maggie. “Even when there’s not so many.”

  “Do you mean people staying and visiting? Surely it isn’t always like that.”

  “Oh, but it is,” said Catharine. “It’s the best part of the week.”

  “I’ve never known a church like that before,” Amanda said. “Even Rev. Diggorsfeld’s—I mean Timothy’s church in London wasn’t. He just got through with his sermon, then everyone shook his hand, filed out of the church, and left. But here everyone was so friendly—I thought it was going to go on all day.”

  “It was your father’s idea,” said Jocelyn.

  “What was?”

  “He’s the one who started it. He decided one day that he wasn’t going to leave, or let other people go home either, until he had greeted everyone. Before long everyone got into the spirit of it. It has been going on ever since.”

  They had just come into view of the clearing and the cottage. Suddenly Maggie burst into a labored, ambling run.

  “Flora . . . Flora, you get out of there!” she cried, grabbing up a stick as she passed the barn and open gate into a small adjoining pasture. She arrived at her garden in front of the house, still yelling at the cow and proceeded to beat her on the hindquarters with all the vigor of Donal Grant taking his club to Hornie.

  “Get out of the garden, Flora, you dumb beast. My flowers are not for your lunch. Get back into your field!”

  The three others hurried after her. With the four making a slowly tightening semicircle, hands outstretched and blocking all directions but one, Flora soon began methodically wandering back toward her permitted grazing pasture, showing no inclination toward either hurry or concern.

  “I’m too old for such foolishness!” panted Maggie. “It puts me in mind of the day Bobby had his fall, when suddenly I found Flora with me in my garden when she should have been with him.”

  Gradually Maggie turned pensive as they made their way toward the cottage.

  “It reminds me too,” she went on, “of what dear Timothy was saying just an hour or two ago in the church, about the glow of eternity.”

  “Yes, that was nice,” added Catharine. “Very poetic, I thought.”

  “It seems to me that glow’s getting a bit brighter for me lately,” Maggie went on. “With Bobby’s passing coming so sudden, and now George and Charles, one can never tell how or when the end might arrive.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Maggie,” said Jocelyn. “Don’t you remember what Timothy told us—that we Heathersleigh women have to be strong and stick together. You can’t leave us anytime soon. We need you.”

  Despite her comments, Jocelyn could sense Maggie’s serious mood deepening.

  “I’m no longer forty, my dear,” said the older woman. “I’m climbing up to seventy-eight, and it won’t be long.”

  “You’re as strong as any of us, Maggie. You’re not going to leave us for a good long time.”

  “Your Charles was as strong as most men,” rejoined Maggie. “And look at your George—young and vigorous with his whole life ahead of him. But the Lord’s got his own way of marking out our days, and even the strength of a bull doesn’t carry much meaning with his schedule.”

  Maggie’s words at last caused the others to grow pensive with her.

  “And when a woman is my age,” she continued, “it’s time she spends some time thinking about that garden that lies beyond the door, like Timothy was telling us about, as well as the one in front of her house.”

  The other three now realized something serious was on Maggie’s mind as they followed her into the cottage.

  “I think it’s time I had a talk with you three,” Maggie said. She stoked the fire in her stove and put a kettle of water on for tea.

  “What about?” Jocelyn asked.

  “About Heathersleigh, and what’s to become of my cottage here when I’m gone,” answered Maggie.

  She led them into her sitting room. They all sat down together.

  “I know,” she began, “that all this will come out eventually anyway. But I want you to hear it from my own lips. At first I kept it to myself. I didn’t think the time was right to speak out. But with all that’s happened this week, I think I oughtn’t to remain silent any longer. Your being home, Amanda dear,” she added, “may have something to do with it. You see, it was last October when the revelations came to me.”

  “Revelations?” repeated Amanda.

  “I was praying for you, my dear,” Maggie said. “I remember the night well. I woke from a sound sleep with my Bobby’s words about a hidden legacy in my brain. I don’t know if you remember, but it was something he said one time to you when you were visiting us.”

  “I remember,” nodded Amanda with a smile.

  “And I was telling you about the mystery of the kingdom and my grandmother’s favorite passage.”

  Again Amanda nodded.

  “As I said, I had awakened from a sound sleep. It was the middle of the night. I’d gone to bed, as I said, praying for you. When I awoke several hours later I was thinking about the past and the word ‘legacy’ from my Bobby’s lips. And I wondered again how this cottage came into the hands of my family, a mystery that has perplexed folks around here for longer than most people can remember. And I found myself wondering what was to become of this place after I was gone.

  “Many stories and rumors from my childhood began to come back to me—things my mother had said about the Hall and its people. And, of course, in the village everyone had their own opinion on the matter and were free with various speculations. Now they all began to rush back into my mind, things I hadn’t thought of in years. It was as if I was suddenly alive to things I had heard sixty or seventy years before but had completely forgotten.

  “My brain was so full by then that I got up and sat down right here, in this very chair, with my Bible in my lap. I found myself drawn to the passage I had told you about, Amanda, on that same day—the passage my grandmother liked so well. That was the night I made my discovery.”

  She got up and walked toward the kitchen.

  “I think the water’s ready,” she said. “Let me make us some tea, and then I will tell you all about it.”

  ————

  Find the key and unlock the mystery.

  Maggie had read the words in her grandmother’s hand in the margin beside the fourth chapter of Mark over and over. But what could the key she had just found in the secretary be meant to unlock?

  She began snooping and looking about the old cabinet with enlivened interest. She pulled the small drawer above the desk all the way out and set it aside. Key still clutched in her left hand, with her right she sent her fingers probing into the opening. Her hand did not go far, for it was not a deep drawer. She now looked at the desk portion of the secretary. Neither was it of great depth.

  In fact, Maggie thought, stepping back and examining the entire piece from the side angle, both desk and drawer only extended about halfway toward the back board of the cabinet. Why were they so shallow when the cabinet itself was at least twice as deep from front to back?

  Again she probed into the empty drawer cavity, investigating every inch with the tips of her fingers.

  What was this . . . the back panel felt loose?

  She jiggled it, finally realizing it was meant to slide back and forth! Maggie jostled it vigorously and managed to slide it about half an inch to one side. She stuck a f
inger into the crack and the next instant had it sliding along grooves which were now suddenly visible. Behind it in the new opening her fingers felt a small metal apparatus.

  Excited now, Maggie stooped and gazed into the cavity. A brass lock was built into the hidden recess of the cabinet, kept from view behind the panel of wood she had just slid away.

  With fingers trembling, she took the key and inserted it. It slid into the mechanism as smoothly as if it had been oiled yesterday!

  Maggie turned the key a quarter turn.

  From somewhere inside she heard the faint metallic sound of a lock releasing.

  Below the drawer, the back wall of the desk gave way and opened toward her. A secret panel, held vertical and secure by the lock directly above it, now swiveled smoothly down on embedded pivots somewhere in the cabinet, revealing a faceless shelf whose base was the opposite side of the back panel of the secretary.

  Lying inside the newly revealed box-shelf lay a single folded sheet of heavy paper yellowed with age.

  Heart beating, Maggie removed it, brought it out to the light, sat back down in her chair, and unfolded it.

  Twenty minutes later Maggie still sat, shaking her head in disbelief. To think it had been here all along—the key, the lock, the hidden compartment—right in front of her eyes—and the answer to the mystery that had plagued the people of Milverscombe, and given rise to so many stories and rumors, for over half a century—how the cottage of the Heathersleigh estate had come into the hands of a poor local peasant family with hardly two shillings to rub together.

  In her hands Maggie held the deed to Heathersleigh Cottage—this very cottage, sold, as was written on it, in the year 1849 from Henry Rutherford, Lord of the Manor of Heathersleigh, to one Arthur Crompton, Bishop.

  What could its significance be but that to which her grandmother was referring as the sale of the birthright of the Genesis passage? Further documentation seven years later, in the year 1856, apparently upon Crompton’s death, recorded the transfer of the deed to Orelia (Kyrkwode) Moylan, Maggie’s own grandmother, to be passed to her heir after her death, or, in the absence of descendants, to the Church of England. The stamp of the solicitors’ firm Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz attested to the legality of the 1856 transfer of ownership.