A New Dawn Over Devon (32 page)

 53 
Deciphering the Clues

When Stuart Coleridge opened the door of the parsonage the following morning, he was as surprised to see Amanda standing before him as he was at her request.

“Good morning, Vicar Coleridge,” she said. “I wondered if I could look at the parish records.”

Again
, he thought to himself, reminded of the strange man who had called on him the previous summer. “Of course, Amanda,” he replied. “Which ones?”

“Births,” she answered.

Wondering what this could all be about, but saying nothing for the present, the vicar led Amanda from the parsonage to the church, where he removed the two large books bound in faded red leather from the case where they were kept and set them on a table before her. Amanda flipped through the first two or three pages of the oldest volume until she came to the early years of the nineteenth century, then began following the entries more closely until she arrived at the year she sought.

There were the births noted on February 11, 1829, exactly as in the family Bible at home:
Ashby Rutherford
, the eldest, followed on the next line by his twin sister,
Cynthia Rutherford
.

To the right, in the margin, was also noted a Scripture reference similar to that in the Bible back at the Hall—
Genesis 25:26, 31; Psalm 27:12
—with the tiny initials
A.C
. and a date beside them,
16–7–55
.

What was it with all these marginal references? thought Amanda, first in Maggie's Bible, then in the family Bible, and now in the parish records!

Had they all been made by the same hand? And yet . . . as she studied this particular note in more detail, it seemed distinctive from that in the Hall Bible, the hand a little shakier and more upright. But both, though slightly different, began with Genesis 25.

“Do you have a Bible I could borrow for a moment, Vicar Coleridge?” asked Amanda.

“Certainly,” he replied. “I will only be a moment.”

He turned and left. While he was gone, Amanda took the time to write down the references of the three verses on a fresh sheet of paper. The vicar returned a minute later with a Bible in hand. Amanda looked up the three passages and read them in order, beginning with the twenty-sixth verse exactly as she had read it last night in the library:
And after that came his brother
out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years when she bare them.

Then the thirty-first:
And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright
.

And finally Psalm 27:12:
Deliver me not over unto the wil
l of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.

Again, she thought, what was the connection between this odd collection of verses?

Her mind full of many questions, Amanda thanked Vicar Coleridge, and began the same walk from the village to Maggie's cottage that she had made long ago at age nine. Today, however, she was on a mission and she had no idea where it would lead.

As she went she reflected on what she had discovered thus far. If the wild notion that the clue in the family Bible had sparked was true, it would certainly seem to be confirmed by the reference in the parish birth record. And it would be confirmed by Maggie's suspicions that Bishop Crompton had indeed been paid off as a false witness.

Amanda quickened her step, the sense growing upon her that Orelia Moylan's old Bible might hold the remaining clues that would unravel the final threads of this mystery.

Hastily she entered the cottage, gave Maggie a hug and kiss, then asked, “Grandma Maggie, may I borrow your Bible?”

“Certainly, dear. What for?”

“I'll tell you later,” replied Amanda, picking up the Bible from the open secretary, where it always lay. She kissed Maggie again and was gone as quickly as she had come, leaving Maggie watching after her, wondering what it could all be about.

Amanda hurried back to the library at the Hall, where the family Bible still sat open from the previous night. She placed the two Bibles side by side, then also laid on the table the two sheets of her notes, including the parish record entries she had just written down forty minutes ago.

She turned again to the significant passage in Mark 4 Maggie had shown them months ago where she had found the words about the mystery and the key, and with the tiny reference to Genesis 25:31–33.

Genesis 25 again!

Every clue pointed to the Jacob and Esau passage!

Amanda turned in both Bibles to the now significant passage in Genesis 25 about Esau's sale of his birthright to Jacob, which was noted in all three marginal additions. She glanced back and forth between them. Maggie had assumed the Jacob and Esau reference had only to do with the sale of the cottage to Bishop Crompton. But now Amanda was sure there was more.

She continued to stare at the pages, now focusing her attention, not on the faint underlinings in the family Bible, but on the page in Maggie's small Bible. In the center column, among the various references and cross-references of the study portion, had been added in hand a small additional reference beside the thirty-third verse:
Proverbs 20:21
.

What could Proverbs 20:21 have to do with Jacob and Esau?

Was this a clue meant to be followed?

Quickly Amanda flipped through the pages to the book of Proverbs, then read the indicated twenty-first verse:
An inheritance may be g
otten hastily at the beginning; but the end thereof shall not be blessed.

The verse was underlined, this time boldly and unmistakably in pen.

What could it mean?

Again, in the center column among the printed references, she saw another handwritten notation, this time leading her to
2 Chronicles 10:16
. Hurriedly she turned back toward the front of the book, found 2 Chronicles, and read:
And when all Israel saw that the king would
not hearken unto them, the people
answered the king, saying, What portion have
we in David? And we have none inheritance in the son
of Jesse: every man to your tents, O Israel: and now, David, see to thine own house. So all Israel went to
their tents
.

This time only the words “we have none inheritance in the son” were underlined.

And again she noted a verse among the center references beside 2 Chronicles 10:16. This time she found herself led to 2 Kings 9:12:
And they said
, It is false;
tell us now
, Amanda read as soon as she located the verse.
And he said, Thus and thus spake he to m
e, saying, Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king over Israel.

Only the words “It is false” were underlined.

By now Amanda's brain was racing feverishly. She realized she had stumbled onto a circuitous scriptural trail laid down generations before, she suspected by Maggie's own grandmother Orelia Moylan, the midwife who had delivered the Rutherford twins. Maggie had probably noticed these underlinings at some time in her years of Bible reading, but had no doubt never followed them in order as Amanda was herself doing now, beginning with the first reference beside Genesis 25:33. And when the underlined portions were read in sequence, they told an incredible tale. Was it possible, thought Amanda, that she had at last unearthed the long-hidden secret about what had actually happened that night back in 1829?

Yet once more she noted a verse among the center references beside 2 Kings 9:12. This time it led her to Numbers 27:8:
And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying
, If a man die,
and have
no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.

And from it to Ezekiel 16:46:
And
thine elder sister
is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters
.

And there the scriptural trail seemed to end. For beside Ezekiel 16:46 no additional reference in the center column was noted.

Amanda sat back, eyes wide, shaking her head as she glanced again over the page of notes she had taken, and the underlined words she had written down while progressing through the verse-to-verse trail.

 54 
Culmination

Amanda was more certain than ever that she knew what had happened that night in February of 1829.

It explained everything, all the way down to Bishop Crompton's curious acquisition of Heathersleigh Cottage and his even more curious disposition of it at the time of his death. It might explain why the family Bible had been hidden, and why the London branch of the Rutherfords had always been so anxious to find it.

If only George were here, Amanda thought. He would love all this! And be able to make sense of it in a minute. But he wasn't. So she had to try to figure it out herself.

Her discoveries might explain many of the hidden mysteries about this place that was their home. But they could not tell her what was to be done as a result.

Realizing what these revelations might mean, should she divulge what she had found? If she did, what would be the consequences to them all?

Amanda sat dumbfounded, staring at the Bibles and her papers, for probably thirty or forty minutes.

Gradually her spinning brain began to calm and her spirit quieted. What had begun to dawn on her was too huge. She could hardly take it in.

Half an hour later, still in a near daze, she rose. There was only one place she could pray through these stunning developments, and
seek the guidance she knew was required for the decision that must be made. She knew it would not be her decision alone. But she had to know her own heart before she shared it with anyone else. Too much was at stake to speak lightly.

In a deepening mood of prayer, she left the library, descended the stairs, and walked out of the Hall.

Jocelyn came into the library shortly after Amanda's departure. She saw the two Bibles on the table, still open, along with Amanda's pen and several pages of notes spread about.

What had Amanda been working on? she wondered. And why was Maggie's Bible here too?

With curiosity Jocelyn made her way slowly around the library, pausing at the north window. She saw Amanda outside walking slowly across the meadow. Was she on her way to Maggie's? But as she went, Amanda now bore more northward, her step purposeful, toward the wooded area west of the cottage.

Jocelyn watched her for a few moments more, then turned to leave the library, pausing once again at the table where Amanda had been engaged in what looked like such intensive study. She glanced over the papers one more time, having no idea that the thoughts tumbling through her daughter's mind at that moment so deeply concerned her own future.

Amanda reached her father's prayer wood, as she still called it.

So many emotions always filled her every time she came here.

But today was like no other visit she had ever made. She had been given glimpses of the eternal reality of this place on previous occasions. But now for the first time the deepest purpose of Charles Rutherford's prayer sanctuary was sweeping into the maturing spiritual consciousness of his daughter—that purpose to which God ultimately leads all those of his sons and daughters who seek him: the abandonment of their own ambitions, their own very selves, into his higher Will.

For all the years of her life, until these recent months of heartache-stimulated reversal and growth, the daughter of Charles Rutherford had tried to run from this highest of all life's necessities, this ultimate of all life's opportunities, this most precious of all life's choices—the great
privilege
which, if not taken as the privilege it is, will ultimately one day become the great
requirement
, of laying down one's own
will, in a glorious moment exemplifying the crowning triumph of human freedom, to say, “‘Not mine, God my Father, but your will be done.'”

Amanda was now approaching that flowering pinnacle of human personhood, which her father's and Timothy's friend the Scotsman called the blossom of humanity: the moment of holy abandonment of herself into Another.

At last were the prayers of the father fulfilled in the daughter.

Amanda knelt down in the soft, moist grass, bowed her head to the ground, and began to pray, not knowing that she was doing exactly what her father had done during so many seasons of his own relinquishment of will.

“Lord, do your will,”
burst from within her.
“Show me what it is . . . tell me what you
want me to do.”

She paused briefly, and then as the tears began to flow, added,
“Make me willing, Lord
 . . . even to give up Heathersleigh, if that is your will
.”

When Amanda rose to walk home half an hour later, her course was clear. She was confident she knew the Father's will, and knew what her own father would have done in the same circumstances. Ultimately it would be her mother's decision. But it would affect both herself and Catharine, as well as their mother, for the rest of their lives. So her own mind had to be clear.

As she went at last she understood that painful laying down of her father's she had so resented years before when he had told them of his decision to leave politics.

Amanda smiled sadly as she went.
He
had known what it meant to relinquish, not only his life, but the ambitions of that life, into God's hands. She had never understood before now. At last she understood his heart.

And now an equally momentous relinquishment faced them all. Her own personal battle with it had just been won, through many tears and much anguish of heart, and was now behind her.

As she was walking across the meadow back toward the Hall, still trying to dry her red eyes, she saw Betsy coming toward her.

“Betsy, have you seen my mother and sister?” asked Amanda.

“No,” answered Betsy. “When is Sister Hope coming back?”

“I don't know, Betsy—in a few days, I believe.”

“I wish she would hurry.” Betsy walked toward the barn.

Amanda continued on. She found Catharine in the kitchen and Jocelyn in the sun-room.

“We have to go to Maggie's,” she said. “Mother, would you have Hector hitch a buggy? I have to go get some things from the library.”

Before they could ask what it was all about, she was climbing the stairs. Jocelyn knew from the look on her face and the tone of her voice that whatever was on Amanda's mind, it was serious.

She set about making preparations at once.

Upstairs in the library, Amanda began to gather the two Bibles and her notes, then paused and thought a moment.

She turned and walked to the well-familiar shelf that had been her father's favorite, reached up, and took down a thick volume of one of the Scotsman's stories. How she chanced to think of it she hardly knew, but all at once she remembered her father reading the passage to them years ago.

It took her three or four minutes to find it. Then, with the familiar voice of her father in her mind's ear, she sat down and again read the now poignantly significant words:

To trust in spite of the look of being forgotten; to keep crying out into the vastness whence comes no voice, and where seems no hearing; to struggle after light, where there is no glimmer to guide; to wait patiently, willing to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail—such is the victory that overcomes the world, such is faith indeed.

After such victory Cosmo had to strive and pray hard. It was difficult for him.

But there was still one earthly clod clinging to Cosmo's heart. There was no essential evil in it, yet it held him back from the freedom of the man who, having parted with everything, possesses all things. The place, the things, the immediate world in which he was born and had grown up had a hold of his heart. The love was born in him and had a power in him. And though it had come down into him from generation after generation of ancestors, Cosmo was not one of those weaklings who find in themselves certain tendencies toward wrong which perhaps originated in the generations before them, who say to themselves, “I cannot help it, so why should I fight it?” and at once create a new evil, and make it their own by obeying the inborn impulse. Such inheritors of a lovely estate, with a dragon in a den which they have to kill that the brood may perish, make friends with the dragon, and so think to save themselves the trouble.

I do not think that Cosmo loved his home too much. I only think he did not love it enough in God. To love a thing divinely is to be ready to yield it without a pang when God wills it. But to Cosmo the thought of parting with the house of his fathers and the land that yet remained was torture. Instead of sleeping the perfect sleep of faith, he would lie open-eyed through half the night, hatching scheme after scheme to retain the house. He had yet to learn to leave the care of it to him who made it, for his castle of stone was God's also. As he lay in the night in the heart of the old place, and heard the wind roaring about its stone roofs, the thought of losing it would sting him almost to madness.

Suddenly one night he became aware that he could not pray. It was a stormy night. The snow-burdened wind was raving and Cosmo lay still, with a stone in his heart, for he was now awake to the fact that he could not say, “Thy will be done.” He strained to lift up his heart to God, but could not. Something had arisen between him and his God and beat back his prayer. A thick fog was about him. In his heart not one prayer would come to life.

It was too terrible! Here was a schism at the root of his being. The love of things was closer to him than the love of God. Between him and God rose the rude bulk of a castle of stone. He crept out of bed, lay on his face on the floor, and prayed in an agony. The wind roared and howled, but the desolation of his heart made it seem as nothing.

“God!” he cried, “I thought I knew you, and sought your will. And now I am ashamed before you. I cannot even pray. But hear my deepest will in me. Hear the prayer I cannot offer. Be my perfect Father to fulfill the imperfection of your child. You know me a thousand times better than I know myself—hear me and save me. Make me strong to yield to you. And therefore, even while my heart hangs back, I force my mouth to say the words—
Take from me what you will, only make me clean and pure
. To you I yield the house and all that is in it. It is yours, not mine. Give it to whom you will. I would have nothing but what you choose shall be mine. I have you, and all things are mine.”

Thus he prayed, with a reluctant heart, forcing its will by the might of a deeper will that
would
be for God and freedom, in spite of the cleaving of his soul to the dust.

For a time his thoughts ceased in exhaustion.

When thought returned, all at once he found himself at peace. The contest was over, and in a few minutes he was fast asleep.

It was not that after the passing of this crisis on this particular night there was no more stormy weather. Often it blew a gale—often a blast would come creeping in—almost always in the skirts of the hope that
God would never require such a sacrifice of him. But he never again found he could not pray. Recalling the strife and great peace, he would always at such times make haste to his Master, compelling the slave in his heart to be free and cry, “Do your will, not mine.” Then would the enemy withdraw, and again he breathed the air of the eternal.

When a man comes to the point that he will no longer receive anything except from the hands of him who has the right to withhold, and in whose giving alone lies the value of possession, then is he approaching the inheritance of the saints in light, those whose strength is made perfect in weakness.

With fresh tears in her eyes, Amanda rose, replaced the book, gathered the two Bibles, and went downstairs to join mother and sister.