A New Dawn Over Devon (21 page)

 30 
The Greater Victory

Later that same night, Amanda lay in bed recalling the events of the afternoon.

She could hardly believe what had come out of her mouth when she was talking to Chelsea and Betsy. The comments, when they came, were so unexpected that she hardly had time to stop and ask herself how she could have had such words to say in the first place.

————

Was your father really killed?” Amanda overheard Chelsea ask Betsy when the two girls were alone for a few minutes after the others had gone into the next room.

Amanda and Jocelyn were in the corridor just outside the open door. They had not been able to get Betsy to utter so much as a word about what had happened, so when they heard Chelsea's question, they could not help pausing to stand out of sight and listen.

A barely whispered “yes” prompted Chelsea's next question. “How do you know? Were you there?” she persisted.

“Uh-huh,” Betsy said almost inaudibly.

“Were you scared?” they heard Chelsea ask.

“Oh yes,” Betsy spoke up. “I thought they would kill me too.”

“What happened? Did they have a gun?”

“Yes, and they came in after my father, yelling at him, and I was hiding in the loft where he had just put me a minute before. Then
they argued, and they shot him.”

Jocelyn's eyes were already filling with tears as she and Amanda listened from the hallway. It was obvious from the quiver in Betsy's voice that she was about to cry. What the poor child must have been through!

But all at once a hardness came into the girl's voice that prevented the tears.

“I hate them,” she said. “When I grow up, I will go back to Looe. I will find them and kill them myself. I hate them, I hate them!”

At this outburst, Chelsea fell silent.

Jocelyn and Amanda looked at each other in shock. They had never heard Betsy say such a thing. Mother and daughter hesitated only a moment before Amanda left her mother's side and walked into the room.

Chelsea stood motionless—momentarily cowed into silence—an expression of fear on her face at Betsy's vehement declaration.

“There is something even better than killing your enemies that you can do to repay them, Betsy,” Amanda said calmly as she approached.

“What!” retorted Betsy, glancing around, her voice still angry, her dark hazel eyes afire.

Amanda waited a moment before answering, hoping Betsy would calm down. She put her hand on her shoulder and slowly sat down beside her. Chelsea came and stood on the other side.

“You can forgive them,” said Amanda at length.

“I will never forgive the men who killed my father!” shouted Betsy.

“Then you will one day become just as bad as they are.”

“No I won't!”

“Hate is hate, Betsy,” said Amanda, speaking slowly and calmly. “It was hate that made them shoot your father. If you hate them in return, you have become just like them. The only way to win, and have victory over both those men and the memory of what they did, is to forgive them.”

Betsy seemed hardly able to take in the idea. Perhaps it was the thought of gaining victory over her father's murderers that temporarily silenced her.

“You see, Betsy,” Amanda went on, “sometimes hate
is
justified. This can be a terrible world, and sometimes bad things happen. It was an evil thing those men did. They are bad men. No one would blame you for hating them. No one would say you were wrong to hate them.
It is natural to be angry with those who have done us wrong, or have done wrong to someone we love. But God wants us to lay down our anger and our hatred so that he can grow something better in its place in our hearts.”

“What?” asked Betsy, her voice calming.

“Love,” answered Amanda. “God wants to help us
love
those who have done us wrong.”

“How could I possibly love them?” said Betsy, more in disbelief than anger.

“God loves them.”

“I could never love the men who killed my father.”

“I think perhaps you will one day, Betsy. And you will be happier for it.”

“I don't want to love them. I want to hate them.”

“God will help you want to love them,” replied Amanda. “Then he will help you forgive them so that you can love them. It is not something you can do all by yourself. None of us are able to love very well. Do you know, Betsy, I did not even love my father as I should. So in that way, I am even worse than you, for I am sure you loved your father very much, didn't you?”

Betsy nodded. “My father was a good man,” she said, “and sometimes I cannot stand it.” She began to cry.

“I'm sure he was,” replied Amanda, drawing the girl to her tenderly. “I wish I could have known him. But, Betsy, my father is dead now too. That is something you and I share. And though you hate those men who killed your father, I actually hated my own father for a time, even though he was a good man. Hatred was inside me, Betsy, and it nearly ruined my life. I also hated God. All that hatred that was in me I am now finally learning to get rid of. It is hard because, as my dear sister told me not long ago, the person I need to forgive most of all is myself. I feel terribly guilty and unworthy of God's love, for I was a very unkind and selfish girl. But I know that forgiveness will heal my guilt, though it hasn't done so completely yet, just as it will heal your hatred. I hope you will get rid of your hatred too. Jesus will help you, if you will let him.”

Amanda could hear her mother quietly weeping in the hallway as she softly hurried away to her room.

————

Amanda lay in her bed, eyes open, staring into the quiet blackness of the night as the memory of the day's incident receded.

Something had changed for her. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but a sense of peace had slowly begun to steal upon her—a peace she hadn't felt in a very long time—a peace, now that she thought of it, she had perhaps
never
felt before. And with it came the growing conviction, still vague and undefined, that Timothy was right, that she indeed had something to offer girls such as Betsy and Chelsea.

“Thank you, Lord,”
Amanda breathed quietly.
“I think I
am beginning to know—really know—that you love me
 . . . thank you.”

 31 
Be a Good Girl

Alone in her own bed, Elsbet Conlin also lay awake.

The reliving of her father's murder followed by Amanda's words had triggered a memory she had till then all but forgotten. If this was the season at Heathersleigh for remembering a father's words, the Spirit-prompted activity was not limited to the daughter of Sir Charles Rutherford.

Betsy had been overwhelmed these last few weeks with the knowledge that her father was dead. But now for a few moments her father was alive again in her thoughts. Just when this incident she was remembering had taken place she wasn't sure. She was probably nine or ten.

————

“Betsy,” said Sully Conlin, sitting his daughter down on a wooden chair and gazing intently into her eyes. “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to be a good girl.”

Betsy stared back, not exactly alarmed to hear him talk so, but sobered by his tone and expression. He looked weary and suddenly older than she had ever seen him. How could she possibly understand the world he lived in, and his occasional worries if something went wrong?

“My own mama always told me to be a good boy,” Conlin said in a strangely nostalgic tone. Then he smiled sadly. “I haven't been as good
as I should have been,” he went on. “Because when a man goes to sea he sometimes gets mixed up with bad men.”

He leaned close and cupped her soft white chin and cheeks in his rough, scarred hand and looked deep into her eyes. “But, Betsy, don't get mixed up with bad people,” he said. “Listen to your papa when he tells you to find
good
people after I'm gone—good people that will help you be good too. Will you promise that?”

“Yes, Papa,” nodded Betsy, “I promise.”

“If you are a good girl,” he said, leaning back, “you will grow up to be a lady like your mother. You want to be like your mother, don't you, Betsy?”

Betsy nodded vigorously.

“Then you be a good girl, Betsy. And you find people to help you be good. If you do, you'll make me proud of you. That's all I want, Betsy, is for you to be a good girl like your mother.”

————

Even though Betsy had forgotten her father's words for a time, they now penetrated deep.

“Be a good girl . . . grow up
to be a lady . . . make me proud of you . . . find
people to help you be good. . . .”

She was only a month from her fourteenth birthday and was becoming a woman more rapidly than she realized. With good food, regular meals, and work and exercise, her body was filling out and changing even more quickly since her arrival at Heathersleigh. But the changes coming to her were not all physical. Now she was beginning to think . . . think about important things . . . think about what kind of person she wanted to be, and what she wanted the girl called Elsbet Conlin to become.

In every life there is a time for remembering, a season when thoughts turn inward, a time when decisions are made to point one's footsteps in lifelong directions. That moment might come at fifty or at ten. For Amanda, circumstances had forced it upon her at twenty-five. Her father and mother had not begun to reflect and turn inward until their late thirties. But for Betsy Conlin, though she was much younger, such a season was now at hand.

As both Amanda and Betsy privately recalled the conversation they had shared earlier that day, neither knew how deeply Amanda's words had penetrated into her mother's heart.

The widow of Charles Rutherford also lay in bed thinking and praying that night.

It was heartbreakingly bittersweet to think of, but with tears in her eyes, Jocelyn realized that the vision of her husband—the dear man who had loved her into self-assurance, into personhood, almost into faith itself (for how could she have ever experienced God's love had he not loved her first?)—was still alive. Even in his death, like God's Son whom he served, Charles continued to give life. In his own way, his spirit continued on in this house, this refuge of life as he had made it for her, and was still giving life to others.

She thought about Heathersleigh and what it had always been to her. Charles had helped make it the personal retreat and oasis where she could grow and become the person God wanted her to be.

As she lay thinking, Jocelyn remembered the card she had given Charles just after his fifty-third birthday, with the picture of the great sprawling tree in full leaf. The moment she had seen it, she had been reminded of her husband. Charles had always been, she told him, a towering oak, a permanent trunk of strength in a crowded and busy world. He was a secure stronghold that would never change, and she was not the only one who had found rest under the protective shade of his branches.

But now he was gone. And people were looking to her to be what Charles had been. Sometimes it overwhelmed her.

And yet . . . if his spirit and vision did live on, perhaps that place of rest, that oasis, that refuge, could continue on too in the lives of others. Even now, in the daughter whose homecoming he had not lived to see, Charles's life was bearing fruit.

Then she thought of the acorns of an oak, which must die in order to be ground into meal, then washed with ashes to remove the bitterness. And with the thought came Jesus' words, “Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it remains alone, but if it die it brings forth much fruit.”

Jocelyn remembered what Timothy had said on the evening of their return from the memorial service several months ago, when he had challenged them to look toward the future as an opportunity rather than a tragedy.

“In many ways,”
came Timothy's voice into her memory,
“women are the stronger of the two
halves of humanity when something greater than physical strength is required. I am excited to see what
might lie ahead
. I think God has some great thing in store. Whatever
it is will grow out of the ashes of your pain, and will flower as the result of the compassion perfected by your suffering.”

And with the words came again the reminder of the Chalet of Hope, where Amanda had at last been turned toward home.

What do you have to do here, Lord?
Jocelyn prayed.
You have provided such abundance. And though Charles is gone, the peace and
strength he gave somehow lives on at Heathersleigh. How do
you want to use it in the lives of others?

Her prayers fell silent and her thoughts returned to the man who had been her oak tree. Would such a time come when Heathersleigh was again giving life as Charles had allowed it to give her—a place of peace, a place to learn who you were, a place to learn to accept God's love?

Recalling the conversation between Amanda and the two girls earlier that day, Jocelyn thought, perhaps that time had already begun.