A New Dawn Over Devon (4 page)

1855–1856

Bishop Arthur Crompton's health continued to decline as his age advanced. And still further did his spirit awaken. He retired from his official position, took up permanent residence in his wooded cottage in Devon, which had from the moment of dubious transfer belonged to him rather than the Church.

About a year later his health took a sudden serious turn. He knew immediately that he was dying.

As eternity beckoned, his conscience—which was in reality his Creator-Father's voice speaking into his innermost regions—became all the more imperative. More importantly, he finally began to heed its whispers.

He saw all too clearly that he had not lived a life worthy of his calling. He could not undo what he had done, but he could at least acknowledge his childness toward his heavenly Father, and live out his final days in His care. And what
did
lie in his power to do by way of Zacchaeus' restitution, that much at least he would undertake to do.

To that end, before his strength failed him altogether, he paid a visit to his former church in the village. Knowing well enough where the records were kept, and knowing that the case was never locked, he added a new entry to that he had made twenty-six years earlier. To have simply altered the entry would have been easier, though it would surely have aroused suspicion. And he must uphold the sanctity of the records, even if he knew their falsehood. He would leave his clue in this manner and hope its truth would be uncovered one day.

To further this end, he also arranged for a visit to the Exeter solicitors' firm of Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz. When his business was concluded, two documents were left behind
with his signature, where they would remain in the possession of his longtime friend Lethbridge Crumholtz and his firm for as long as circumstances demanded.

The first was a newly executed will, the chief provision of which would, upon his death, transfer the deed to Heathersleigh Cottage that he had purchased from Henry Rutherford—and which document he gave to the firm for safekeeping—to Orelia (Kyrkwode) Moylan. Upon the deed was added the somewhat unusual provision that the property should pass to Orelia Moylan's heirs until or unless it came into the possession of a final heir with no clear descendant, after whom it would pass to the Church of England.

The second document was a letter, written in his own hand the night prior to his journey to Exeter, in which he detailed exactly what had taken place on that winter's night in February of 1829, how he and the midwife had been drawn into Henry Rutherford's lie, as well as what he had done in 1849 to originally purchase the cottage, concluding with his motives now for its final disposition. Truth, he realized, demanded that a full disclosure be made. He was concerned no longer for his own reputation. But lest any repercussions of a damaging nature should accrue to Orelia Moylan or her heirs, his final instructions indicated that this letter of disclosure should not be made public until the same condition was fulfilled as specified on the deed—the decease of her last remaining heir. At that time, and only then, should the principals of Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz open it and divulge its contents. The terms of his will by then would have long since already been carried out.

With these burdens at last lifted from his conscience, his final months were the happiest of his life. They were marked by his discovery of the joy of that greatest of all secrets that so few in the human race ever find, the mysterious wonder that he was a child who was cared for in every way by a good and loving Father. That the discovery came late in his life may have been unfortunate, but it was not too late to make a man of him in the end.

When Bishop Arthur Crompton died early in the year 1856, all those for miles around Milverscombe were baffled by the irregularity of an unmarried man who had risen so high in ecclesiastical circles leaving his home to an aging local peasant woman whom not a single individual could recall once seeing him with.

They would not have considered it strange had they heard the words feebly whispered from his dying lips that January night:
“My
Father, it has been a life too much wasted loving myself, too little given to listening to you and doing what you told me. I cannot help it, for this
life is done. I shall serve you more diligently in
the next. Forgive my foolishness. You have been a good
Father to me, though I have been a childish son. Perhaps now you will be able to make a true
man of me. In the meantime, do your best with
this place. Make good come of it, though I obtained
it by deceit. Bless the woman and those who follow
. Give life to all who enter this door. May they
know you sooner than I.”

He paused, closed his eyes in near exhaustion, then added inaudibly—

And now . . . I
am ready . . . take me home
.

None heard the words, save him to whom they had been spoken.

Arthur Crompton was discovered dead in his bed the following morning, a smile on his lips, according to the lady from the village who came in to cook for him, and who entered that day when he did not answer her knock.

Most vexed of all by the curious turn was Henry Rutherford himself, the aging Lord of the Manor of Heathersleigh Hall, who, now that his fortunes had again reversed, would have done anything to resecure the property and oust the old woman. But he had no legal recourse. The will, brought forth by Lethbridge Crumholtz of Exeter, was legally irrefutable.

There were now only two alive who knew the connection existing between man of the cloth and the woman of swaddling clothes—Orelia Moylan herself, and the lord of the manor whose secret both had sworn to protect. It was a secret she never revealed, as originally planned. She could not but conclude in the end that perhaps, as in the verses she had noted in both Bibles, the blessing had indeed been passed on as God intended.

Bishop and peasant each carried the knowledge of their unknown alliance to their respective graves.

Everyone said the woman's former profession must have made her privy to some fact which resulted in the strange bequest of the former bishop's country home. No living soul ever discovered what that secret was.

1865–1911

Generations went by, and those who came and went in Heathersleigh Hall pieced together fragmentary clues pointing toward the many mysteries about the place that the passage of time had obscured.

In 1865 a five-year-old visiting youngster from the dispossessed branch of the family tree by the name of Gifford nearly uncovered the root of strife that would later possess him when, leaving his cousin Charles, with whom he was supposed to be playing, he ventured toward the darkened bedchamber of his aging grandfather.

He had seen the nurse leave a few moments earlier. Now curiosity drove him toward the door. He cast a peep inside. The room was dusky, for heavy curtains were pulled to keep out the sunlight. He inched through without touching the door and entered the room.

Across the floor, on a bed between sheets of white, lay the thin form of old Lord Henry, who seemed to have left the reckoning of earthly years behind altogether. One of his thin arms lay outside the bedcovers, appearing even whiter to the youngster than the sheet, though not quite so white as what hair he still possessed atop a skull over which the skin seemed to have been stretched more tightly than seemed comfortable.

With eyes wide in fascinated awe, the boy crept forward, unable to keep the verses out of his head that Charlie had repeated to him only yesterday:

Look where you go, watch what you do,

or Lord Henry will snatch and make you a stew.

He'll cut you in pieces, like he did that night

when his poor Eliza screamed out in such fright.

With his own hand he killed her, or so they say,

and began to go batty the very next day.

It will happen to you, no one will hear your call,

if you venture too close to Heathersleigh Hall.

He reached the bedside and gazed down upon the white face. No expression on the countenance indicated that life still existed inside him. All the rumors about his grandfather, along with the words of the spooky poem, went through the boy's brain as he stared at the bed with heart pounding.

Suddenly both the old man's eyelashes fluttered and twitched, as if his eyes were rolling about inside their sockets.

In panic the boy tried to flee. But his feet remained nailed to the floor. The ancient eyes opened, as if the sense of presence beside the bed had awakened him. He spied a form, yet knew it not as his grandson from London. His pupils widened and locked on to those of the boy, which returned their gaze with mute terror.

Suddenly the thin arm shot from the bed. The grip of ancient fingers closed around the youngster's arm with a strength they had not exercised in years.

In abject horror, the boy's heart pounded like a drum.

“Cynthia . . . my dear young Cynthia,” he whispered, “—you've come back, just like I prayed you would. We'll set all right now—”

He closed his eyes and relaxed a moment to draw in a breath.

“I . . . I was a fool . . .” he tried to begin again, “. . . they were terrible times . . . I had to protect . . . they tried to take the Hall . . . it was your mother . . . if she had only—”

Suddenly light blazed into the room.

“Giffy!” cried the nurse, bounding through the door. “What are you doing bothering your grandfather?”

“I . . . I only came in for a look,” stammered the boy.

“Don't you know he mustn't be disturbed!” she reproached, hurrying toward the bedside. “You stay with Charlie, do you hear!”

She took hold of the thin ancient hand, unwrapped its fingers from the boy's arm, and laid it at his side on the bed.

While the fussy nurse attended to him, chastising herself for her carelessness, the boy crept silently out, the possessor of a secret whose significance he was as unaware of as what the old man's strange words might mean. The shock of seeing the dying man pushed the odd words for some time from his mind.

Henry Rutherford died later that same night, speaking not another word to a living soul.

————

As the years passed, along with wealth accumulated in the business world, the words he had heard as a boy, mingled with the expressed dissatisfaction of his father, Albert, continued to haunt Gifford Rutherford with the fixation of somehow laying claim to the estate where his cousin Charles rose not only to become lord of the manor but also a highly respected member of Parliament and a knight of the realm.

Gifford was indeed of Rutherford blood. But whereas his cousin eventually manifested the spiritual inclinations of old Jeremiah, Gifford's bent was more reminiscent of Broughton and Henry.

Gifford passed on both his character and his greed to his only son, Geoffrey, who came close to stumbling on the key to the secret his father had nearly uncovered as a boy. During a visit of the London Rutherfords to Heathersleigh Hall in 1899, Geoffrey found himself locked in the northeast tower of the Hall as a prank at the hands of his cousin Amanda. Though terrified, the boy accidentally dislodged a loose stone in the wall, finding concealed behind it an ancient key ring. It contained that which would have enabled him to escape the tower through a secret wall-door, by means of a lock hidden behind a small sliding panel of stone, and thus turn the tables on Amanda for good. It also held a tiny key placed on the ring by none other than Orelia Moylan. It was a key which opened more than even Orelia herself knew about, for her father had been shrewd in the matter of the most secretive of all chambers he had been hired to build.

Alas, young Geoffrey was only eight. It did not occur to him that he held in his chubby hand that which, had he known where to locate the secretary to which the key belonged, as well as where to insert it, would have uncovered exactly what his father lusted for.

Therefore he trousered the keys, and neither he nor his father was any nearer the root of things when they left that day than when they came.

And though the elder of the banker Rutherfords continued curious through the years about the missing family Bible, and set stealthy inquiries afoot to steal it out of the Hall, it continued to gather dust, safely out of sight where Orelia had stowed it.

————

Amanda's older brother George had been curious about the great Hall that was his home almost from the day he could walk. He inherited his father's love for exploration, and for asking questions about how things worked and why. And whereas much of Charles's innate curiosity was directed toward mechanisms and people, as a lad George turned his curiosity toward what lay under the floors, behind the walls, and above the ceilings of Heathersleigh Hall.

He had discovered oddities in the garret at nine, and stumbled on yet more fragments of the past in 1904 as a curious sixteen-year-old.

An old wooden chest first drew his attention as he rummaged about in a little-used storeroom on the second floor of the north wing. Opening it, George momentarily had his very hands on that which would have helped explain the riddle of the garret construction that had puzzled him as a boy. But he was not interested in papers and journals. He was more interested in what was to be found beneath the chest. Therefore, he tossed back two ships' logs that had been taken from a cave on the coast 142 years before, and set about dragging the chest away from the wall. Written documents were not as fascinating as the hole in the floor he found beneath the loose boards the chest had been sitting on. Minutes later he was winding down a circular stone stairway into a labyrinth of concealed passages designed by his great-great-grandfather.

He did not stop to ask what could be the motive behind these hidden places. At the moment he was too excited about the hidden invisible world of clandestine twistings and turnings he had found, which led him eventually through the wall on a swiveling bookcase, and unexpectedly into the library, where his astonished parents sat reading. It did not take George many more days to connect the passage with another that led to the tower, through the back side of the concealed doorway that had not been put to use since the night Orelia Moylan had stolen into the house, as well as another passage leading up steep, narrow wooden steps into the garret.

In 1911 George again came close to learning more from that same chest when he brought his younger sister, Catharine, through the hidden passages to the same storeroom. At last the chest's contents had drawn his interest, as he proceeded to explain to Catharine. But his attention was now on the ledgers revealing the construction progress of the Hall. But neither of the two young people noticed the log
books. Thus the mystery of young Broughton Rutherford's ill-fated adventure with Rufus Powell and its links with the Heathersleigh attic regions remained undetected in the midst of their other discoveries.

Nor did Catharine realize that the missing family Bible her cousin Geoffrey's father had been so intent to find, which had curiously disappeared from various of Heathersleigh's portraits in the gallery, itself contained clues that would one day alter their family's history. Had she known where to look, she might have discovered parallel clues that same afternoon from the smaller worn Bible in the cottage of bewildering transfer, the names of whose former owners she and Maggie pored over together in the midst of their needlework.

The three Heathersleigh women walked the passage from library to tower upon Amanda's return to England in 1915, and on that day first put to use the key to the disguised tower door they again possessed after Geoffrey returned the ring, sixteen years after he had taken it, at Charles's funeral. The purpose of the large key was at last known. The smaller, however—though its twin had by now been found in the drawer in the cottage—remained on the tower ring, a riddle unsolved.

Many had indeed brushed close to one or another of the secrets of Heathersleigh Hall, yet still much of the past remained cloaked in mystery.

In the end, it would remain for Margaret Crawford McFee to bring that past further into the light.