Heathersleigh Homecoming (39 page)

 78 
A Visitor to Heathersleigh

It was Jocelyn who opened the door to the visitor who arrived at Heathersleigh Hall.

“Stirling!” she said, greeting him warmly. “How nice to see you.”

“Hello, Mrs. Rutherford. I wanted to stop in for a visit sooner, but my holiday from university has gone by more quickly than I could have imagined.”

“You've been busy, then?”

“My father and I have been building an addition to our barn. The work goes quickly with two. I'm enjoying being home and working with him on it. But every day has gone by so fast I've hardly done anything else. We should finish tomorrow.”

“Can you come in—do you have time for some tea with us?”

Stirling smiled. It wasn't the timid smile of the boy, but the playful smile of a confident young man. “I was hoping you might ask, ma'am,” he said.

“You just make yourself comfortable while I go tell Sarah to add some of those cakes you like to the tea tray. Then I'll fetch Catharine from the library.”

“Always in the library,” laughed Stirling. “What do you say about my fetching Catharine while you're talking with Sarah?”

“An even better plan,” rejoined Jocelyn. “The two of you just stay up in the library, then, and I'll join you. We'll have Sarah bring the tea there.”

They parted for their separate destinations, Jocelyn for the kitchen, young Blakeley limping toward the stairs.

Jocelyn entered the library a few minutes later to find the two young people poring over an atlas lying open on the table.

“What are you looking at?” she said as she approached.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Rutherford,” answered Stirling. “I hope you don't mind. I asked Catharine to show me where Amanda was living.”

“Not at all, Stirling. That's why the atlas is on the table. We've been following the travels of the rest of our family. Charles and George were on their way to the Mediterranean the last we heard, though there has been no mail for some time. It's very difficult. Somehow the maps help a bit.”

She stopped briefly, shaking off the mood that threatened. “So, did you see where Amanda is?”

“Actually,” said Catharine, “we don't
know
that she is in Vienna. That was the postmark on the last letter we received after she left. You remember, don't you, when she visited a year ago?”

Stirling nodded. “The whole village was abuzz with it. I was away at the time, but Mum told me all about it. I had hoped she would stay long enough for me to see her again, but then Mum said she was gone again within a few days.”

Jocelyn's eyes began to fill. Catharine quickly offered the platter of cakes and breads to their guest. Soon the three were laughing and drinking their tea as Stirling told one escapade after another about the young men he was with at Oxford.

“I hope the young ladies are not so rowdy,” said Jocelyn.

“If not, they're sure to be once Catharine arrives,” joked Stirling.

“What!” exclaimed Catharine. “Stirling Blakeley, how can you say such a thing?”

“I remember plenty of scrapes you led George and me into, and not so very long ago either.”

“I did not!” laughed Catharine.

“You did, and you know it.”

“Well . . . I just had to make sure you two didn't leave me out because I was a girl.”

The conversation continued gay and lively, and the afternoon passed quickly. Gradually shadows brought an end to the visit.

“I need to be going,” said Stirling. “Father and I agreed to take a break from the barn this afternoon, but if I know him, he is probably back at work. And I want to go home through the wood so I can stop by briefly to see Maggie.”

He rose, stretched his bad leg a moment or two, then turned toward the door.

“Thank you so much,” he said. “This has been a lovely visit.”

Jocelyn rose to accompany him. “I'll go with you to the edge of the woods, Stirling. Just wait for me at the bottom of the stairs while I get my shawl.”

Jocelyn left the library and walked down to her room. When she returned a minute later, however, she heard Stirling's voice still coming from the library. She went back up the flight of stairs to the second floor. There were the two young people, both leaning against opposite sides of the doorframe into the library, chatting easily and freely.

“Why don't you join us, Catharine?” asked Stirling.

“I'm ready to go back to my book,” she replied. “Rebecca is being tried by the Knights Templar and has called for a champion to save her. I must find out if it is to be Ivanhoe, Robin of Locksley, or King Richard.”

“Maybe it will be none of them,” said Stirling with a sly smile.

“No, no—don't tell me! I have to find out for myself,” laughed Catharine, covering her ears and running back into the library to the window seat where the copy of
Ivanhoe
awaited her.

 79 
Jocelyn and Stirling Blakeley

Jocelyn and Stirling walked down the stairs and left the house through the rear doors. When they were beyond the trim lawn northeast of the Hall and were starting across the wide expanse of grassy meadow between it and the wood where lay the McFee cottage, Stirling spoke in a more serious tone than before.

“I am so sorry about Amanda, Mrs. Rutherford,” he said. “I think of her often at university.”

Surprised, Jocelyn turned her face toward him questioningly.

“You are wondering why I would think about Amanda?”

“Yes,” replied Jocelyn, “I admit, that is what I was thinking.”

“You see,” said Stirling, “it seems that so many of the young men in the lodgings where I live in Oxford complain about their parents, how they don't send them as much money as they want, or that they pester them about not studying hard enough. But mostly they just complain about what seem to me trivial matters. It reminds me of some of the terrible things I have heard Amanda say about you and Sir Charles. And yet people who live in the village, especially such as myself and my parents, see you in a completely different light. It seems to me that you have given your three children nothing but love, just as you have shown to all the rest of us. I can't imagine any two people being more loved than you and Sir Charles. And it is because you always give so much of yourselves.”

“Thank you, Stirling,” replied Jocelyn as they walked slowly along. “You cannot imagine how much your words mean to me.”

They walked awhile longer, when the young man broke the silence again.

“Mrs. Rutherford,” he said, “do you remember the day when Amanda tried to come to my rescue in the village? It was a day when Papa had been drinking.”

“Yes, I remember, Stirling. It seems that is when Amanda began to despise me. I am afraid it is not a good memory.”

“That is too bad—I'm sorry. It is a good memory for me. She seemed like an angel. I'll never forget how she threw herself between Papa and me to try to protect me from his blows. It wasn't long after that when he stopped drinking—thanks even more to Sir Charles than Amanda.”

Jocelyn smiled and nodded.

“It puzzles me how Amanda can be like an angel in my memory, and yet have become so hurtful and critical toward you. I find myself wondering what made her change. And that makes me wonder what the young men at school would think if they knew how my papa had once behaved toward me. Yet now I love him more, it seems, than they love their own fathers, who never did anything like what Papa did when he was drinking. It is all very puzzling.”

Again Jocelyn nodded.

“It is interesting, is it not, Stirling,” she said, “how people view things so differently? That day you speak of was a very hard one for me. Amanda was furious with me for not stepping in and stopping your father from hitting you. She said when she got older she would stand up for people's rights more than I did. I think that's why the suffragette movement so appealed to her. But I knew anything I did to come between you and your father might interfere with the relationship Charles was trying to establish with your father.”

She paused thoughtfully.

“I suppose, as I look back now,” she went on, “it may be that we were too strict in some ways. But at the time you never know exactly where the balance lies. You do the best you can, trying to weigh the constantly shifting needs of leniency and discipline. You'll find out just how hard that balance is when you're a father, Stirling.”

He laughed. “That's hard to imagine, Mrs. Rutherford,” he said. “I'm barely old enough to figure out how to be a grown-up. I can't envision myself as a parent.”

“How old are you now, Stirling?”

“Twenty-four, ma'am.”

“Hmm . . . the same as Amanda—though she will be turning twenty-five this spring. But the years will go by faster than you realize, Stirling, and one day before you know it you may just have a family of your own.”

“If you say so, Mrs. Rutherford,” laughed Stirling.

“Well, we are to the edge of the wood—here is where I will turn around,” said Jocelyn. “It has been wonderful to see you, Stirling. Give my love to your parents.”

“I will, Mrs. Rutherford. And—”

He paused and glanced away briefly.

“And if I could just say, ma'am,” he said after a moment, looking back into Jocelyn's face, “thank you for being such a friend to my mother. I know you mean a great deal to her, in the same way Sir Charles does to my father.”

“Of course, Stirling—thank you.”

They shook hands, then Stirling turned and limped off a few steps, then turned back once more.

“I still pray for her,” he said. “Amanda, I mean.”

“Thank you, Stirling.”

He continued on in the direction of the cottage in the descending dusk and was soon lost to Jocelyn's sight.

A remarkable young man for all he has been through
, thought Jocelyn.

She turned and began making her way back to the Hall, whose windows were lit in the distance across the meadow.

“I still pray for her too,” she whispered with a smile as she went. “I still pray for her too.”