Wayward Winds (23 page)

 42 
A More Welcome Visitor

When the front doorbell of Heathersleigh Hall rang a second time less than ten minutes after the first, good Sarah Minsterly strode toward it with lips pursed in resolve to send the young Powell fellow back where he came from without benefit of any extra kindness out of her mouth. She threw open the door and was on the verge of unleashing a most unpleasant verbal barrage, when her motion was arrested in its tracks by an unexpected visitor standing calmly before her. For a second or two she stood staring still as a statue.

“Mr. Diggorsfeld!” she exclaimed after a moment.

“Yes, Miss Minsterly,” he laughed, “it is me, I assure you, not a ghost.”

“My apologies, sir. It's just that I was expecting someone else—”

Unconsciously Timothy glanced behind him, beginning to put two and two together.

“—but come in, come in, please, sir,” gushed Sarah, her hospitable nature returning as quickly as it had departed a few seconds earlier at the sound of the bell. “Come with me, Mr. Diggorsfeld. Lady Jocelyn is in the little garden outside the kitchen.”

Timothy followed along the corridor to the left toward the west wing, then left again until they came to the kitchen, whose double glass doors stood open to the sunshine streaming down from the southwest. Sarah led the way through the room and outside, where
Jocelyn sat with two other of the household staff, stringing and snapping green beans for canning. She looked up as they approached.

“Timothy!” she exclaimed in delight, leaping to her feet. Beans flew out of her apron in all directions onto the ground as she ran forward and warmly clasped his hands. “This is such a surprise—what on earth are you doing here!”

The man before her was not such as the world would consider imposing. He was of average height—perhaps even an inch or two less than average—and medium build. His hair, light and plentiful when first Charles Rutherford had walked into New Hope Chapel years before, was now thinning noticeably and gradually intermingling with white. Though he was younger than Charles, a stranger might have taken him for several years older. Yet his eyes sparkled with the vitality of life, love, and wisdom, which had made him for years a favorite with everyone at Heathersleigh.

“It is nearly as unexpected on my part,” said the pastor. “I was summoned to perform a funeral in Exeter—”

“Oh, I am sorry,” said Jocelyn. Her face grew serious.

“Think nothing of it,” replied Timothy, shaking his head to alleviate her concern. “To tell you the truth, I hardly knew the woman—I believe we'd met once years ago. But she was a friend of my mother's and apparently had requested me. In any event, it was all very hastily arranged. I simply had no opportunity to let you know ahead of time I was coming.”

“No matter—I am delighted you are here.”

“I certainly couldn't be so close without seeing you.—By the way, who was the chap in the auto who almost ran me and my horse and buggy off your drive in a heap?”

Jocelyn returned his question with a blank stare.

“I'm afraid that would be my fault,” said a voice behind them. They turned as Catharine, who had seen Timothy arrive from upstairs, now walked through the kitchen doors.

“Catharine, my dear!”

“Hello, Mr. Diggorsfeld,” replied Catharine, who then proceeded to tell her mother of the visit from Hubert Powell and the state in which he had left. “I'm sorry, Mr. Diggorsfeld—I didn't mean for him to drive off so recklessly.”

“No harm done.”

“I am sorry too, Timothy,” now said Jocelyn, “but Charles is away. He's up in Cambridge.”

“Well then, I shall enjoy my visit with the rest of you all the more.”

“Shall we go inside and have some lemonade . . . or would you like some tea?”

“Lemonade sounds wonderful,” replied Timothy. “But to be perfectly honest, I'd rather stay out here. It's a lovely day, and I haven't snapped beans since I was a boy. You don't mind if I join you?”

“Mind . . . heavens no,” laughed Jocelyn. “But do you really want to snap beans?”

“Of course. It will be fun.” He glanced around for a chair, then hurried back into the kitchen to fetch one. In two or three minutes he and Catharine had joined the circle and were snapping and destringing like experts.

“You know, Sarah,” said Jocelyn, “we'll have these finished in no time. Why don't you and Kate and Enid go inside and start boiling the water and getting the jars ready? Actually, come to think of it, two of you could go down to the garden and finish picking that last row.”

Just then George came through the kitchen.

“I heard we had a visitor,” he said. “Hello, Mr. Diggorsfeld!”

“George, my lad!” exclaimed Timothy, rising and shaking his hand. “You're looking fit and well.”

“Thank you—so are you.”

“How does it feel to have university life behind you?” said the minister, sitting down and resuming his task. “And by the way, congratulations on your degree—I haven't seen you since.”

“Thank you very much. To answer your question, it feels good—it's a relief actually. Not that there aren't aspects of it I miss, naturally. But it was hard work, and it's good to be home and working with Father again.”

“Join us, George,” said Jocelyn, pointing to the chair Kate had vacated.

“What—cutting up beans?”

“Come, George,” added Timothy, “a little good honest women's labor never hurt any man that I knew of. Especially a bachelor like me. It's a matter of necessity. Although I am extremely thankful for my housekeeper.”

George laughed but sat down. Within five minutes the beans were flying as rapidly from his hands into the tub in the center as from the others.

“Hubert Powell was just here,” Catharine said to her brother.

“Where was I?”

“Out in the stables. He wasn't here long enough for you to know.” Again Catharine recounted the incident.

“It sounds like you handled him fine without any assistance from me,” said George.

“I really have to hand it to you,” said Timothy, “for recognizing the need to let your father be your protector in such matters. More and more these days young people think such a thing is too old-fashioned. But believe me, I've conducted too many ill-advised marriages not to be concerned at how quickly and thoughtlessly marriage is rushed into.”

“Why do you marry people, then?”

“I am an agent of the church. There are certain rules that young people must follow to receive the sanction of the church. If they do, I am bound to marry them. But often they are utterly unprepared.”

 43 
Marriage and God's Will

Why didn't you ever marry, Mr. Diggorsfeld?” asked Catharine after a moment.

Jocelyn glanced over quickly at Timothy, taken aback by the directness of her daughter's question. But the smile of humor on the minister's face showed plainly enough that he had taken no offense.

“I am not, as the saying goes, ‘a confirmed bachelor,' if that is what you mean,” he replied. “It is just that the right opportunity never came my way.”

“You mean you would marry if it did?”

“Of course.”

Catharine appeared almost shocked.

“We ministers in England are not celibate like Catholic priests,” he said, smiling again. “No, I would happily marry if such was what God wanted for me.”

“But you're—” she began.

Diggorsfeld laughed. “I'm
old
 . . . is that what you were going to say?”

Catharine's face turned red.

“I'm only forty-three, my dear. Do you think human feeling stops with the appearance of a few grey hairs?” he added, still chuckling.

Catharine sheepishly shook her head.

“As I said,” the minister continued, “I would marry if it were God's will. But equally will I remain happily single all my life if that
is what God wants for me. Whether married or single is immaterial, so long as I am in God's will.”

“But how do you know God's will?”

“Ah, my dear Catharine—that is the question of the ages. I am more delighted than I can say that you are beginning to ask it at such an early age in your own pilgrimage. But its answer is one you will seek the rest of your days.”

“You make it sound hopeless, as if the question is unanswerable.”

“Oh, by no means! It
is
answerable, and it is full of hope and wonder. But that does not alter the fact that you will continue asking it, in ever more profound ways the deeper your faith grows.”

“Are you saying we
can
know God's will?”

“I believe so,” answered Diggorsfeld. “But it is a
process
, not an event. God's will is not comprised of a series of precise revelations that come singly and specifically, but is a style of life in which one walks with the heavenly Father.”

“I don't think I follow you.”

“Perhaps one day you and I shall sit down and have a long talk about it. Or maybe we shall go for a long ride together and discuss it.”

“When you do, I'm coming along!” said George. “I want in on that discussion too.”

“Wonderful!” rejoined Diggorsfeld. “We shall do it indeed. In the meantime, Catharine, I shall send you a little book called
Life at the Center
, which should help you think in a generally correct direction on the matter. Once you have read it, you will doubtless have even more questions. Then we shall go for that long ride!”

“How did you know it was God's will for you not to marry?” now asked George.

“My, but aren't you two curious about marriage!” laughed Timothy.

“Young people cannot help but think about it,” replied George. “Catharine and I want to do the right thing.”

“I commend you both for that,” rejoined Diggorsfeld. “Let me answer your question about myself by saying that I did not
decide
to be single. There was no moment of revelation indicating bachelorhood to be some momentous thing called
God's will
for me. Such is simply the way my life went. Therefore, I say that up to this point that
is
God's will. My way has been committed to him, and that is what he has done with what I gave him. What his will might be for my future, I cannot say. But back to your question—when I
was in my mid-twenties and fresh out of theological college and recently ordained, serving in my first parish as an assistant, there was a young lady in the congregation who had eyes for me.”

“Ah!
” said Catharine, drawing out the word with heightened interest. The beans immediately stopped falling from her fingers. “But you weren't interested in her?” she added.

“She was very attractive,” answered Timothy. “I suppose in a manner of speaking I could not help being drawn to her. She lavished attention upon me, and did everything in her power to win my affections. No man is immune to the charms of such a young woman. I must admit there were times my soul was in danger. Yet I recognized that her heart and affections were not dedicated to the service of the Lord as were mine. She was forward and coquettish, in love with her own wiles, not the kind of woman who could ever have been a minister's wife. Her father was rich. I could have made myself what the world calls a very nice marriage indeed. I would probably now be preaching in one of London's large and fashionable pulpits. But I knew we would both be miserable in the long run for marrying for the wrong reasons. I would rather remain single all my life than to marry for the wrong reason.”

“Have you ever regretted your decision?” asked George.

“Heavens—not for a second! I am happy as I am because I know I am in God's will. And if God sent a woman of like mind to the door of my study for me to marry tomorrow, I would be equally happy.”

“I don't see how you can say that,” said Catharine. “How can you be
equally
happy either way?”

“Because I content myself where God has put me—wherever that may be. In other words, to marry or not to marry, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is
not
the question—but to do God's will, and to be content in the way in which he brings that will about in your life. You see, working out the details of life according to such-and-such a pattern is not always something we can control. Things don't always happen by our choice.

“But contentment
is
a choice. Contentment is
always
a road any man or woman can walk at
any
time in
any
circumstance. And I happen to believe that contentment is one of the secret ingredients in that mystical and elusive thing we call God's will. Circumstances and events lie outside our control. Contentment does not.
We
control
contentment but not circumstance. It's all in the book I will send you when I get back to London.”

Throughout the conversation, Jocelyn had remained strangely quiet. Timothy now turned to her with a look of question on his face. “Is something troubling you, Jocelyn?”

Jocelyn glanced up and cast him a melancholy smile.

“I hadn't realized it, but perhaps there is,” she said.

“Care to share it?”

“I don't know if it's worth talking about,” she answered. “Somehow the talk of marriage and your sharing about your past . . . it all sent my thoughts back into my own—not a very good place for me to go sometimes. I couldn't help starting to think about my mother and what a heartache my appearance was to her.”

Jocelyn paused reminiscently.

“Actually, I was thinking more about my younger sister,” she went on. “I received a letter from her today—a belated birthday greeting, really. I don't know, it was so impersonal and cool—I suppose it brought back a lot of memories.”

“You and your sister are not close, I take it?”

Jocelyn shook her head.

“We never have been. She is five years younger than I. She was still a girl when I left home for my nursing studies.”

“But there is more to it than mere age?”

Again Jocelyn nodded. “My mother was so relieved when Edlyn was born,” she said sadly. “Even at five, I could feel the joy that suddenly filled the home, a joy she had never felt or expressed in any way about me. The next five years were the most awful years of my life. My mother poured her whole life into my darling little baby sister. Sometimes I hardly saw her for days. Nurses and tutors—it was the only life I knew. I resented it for many years, as you know. It is still painful to recall, though I hope I have forgiven her. But as we grew, how could it be helped that my sister picked up some of my mother's disdain for me? As she got older, she would look at me with peculiar expressions. I still remember one such look when I was eleven and she was but six. At times I wondered if she even knew that I was part of the family. She had been kept so carefully shielded from me. Even now I occasionally detect hints of that same uncertainty from her, on the edge of a remark, in her tone, by a glance, in the
rare instances when we see one another, or even in the occasional letter that comes.”

“It's more Uncle Hugh than Aunt Edlyn, Mum,” now commented George. “He doesn't go very far to hide it. The last time we stopped by to visit them, it made me angry.”

“My sister's second husband,” Jocelyn explained to Timothy. “—But I didn't know you were aware of it, George,” said his mother.

“How could I not be? He treats Father the same way, with that little edge of superiority. I'm sorry to say it, but I don't like him.”

“He sounds like an interesting man,” said Timothy.

“He always has had something of a peculiar attitude about us,” said Jocelyn. “I noticed it even at their wedding. I've wondered if Hugh secretly resents Charles for some reason. I can't imagine why. But there is a subtle undercurrent whenever we see each other, which isn't often. It puts an added strain on my relationship with Edlyn, which is none too warm in the first place.”

“What does your brother-in-law do?” asked Timothy.

“He is a solicitor with some connection to shipping. I don't really know. He has money, that I do know, and my sister enjoys it. They're religious in their own way. I think perhaps that's one reason for the resentment, that Charles made what they consider a display of his faith by being so outspoken about it, when they had been good church people for years without making, what they would say, a big fuss about it.”

“I know the type,” rejoined Timothy. “Every church in the country is full of them. They consider religion respectable the more it is reserved for Sundays only, and its principles never thought about throughout the week. Men like Charles, who try to live their faith
every
day, they find worthy, not of their respect, but of their very quiet, dignified, and respectable resentment.”