Wayward Winds (4 page)

 5 
A Mother's Prayer

The sun beat gloriously down on the earth, calling its children, the flowers, to straighten their slender stalks and raise their colorful faces upward into the light. So too does the Creator of suns and flowers, and men and women, call his children to lift their faces and hearts to the radiance and warmth of his Life.

Lady Jocelyn Rutherford walked slowly across the meadow from the Devonshire estate which was her home. She was one of those human blossoms who had learned, not without pain, to behold the light of her heavenly Father's smile. And now in her heart she carried the reflection of his love with her always.

The daisies and buttercups were out today in wondrous white and yellow profusion on their canvas of green. The happy sight had lured her from the house.

As she began she had not been thinking of the similar day fifteen years earlier. But now as she strolled through the profusion of summery growth, Jocelyn remembered the occasion so long ago when she had walked near here with George and Amanda as children. She had been heavy with Catharine inside her at the time and recalled how weary the walk made her. The first daisy of the season had revealed itself to both youngsters, and they had raced up the knoll toward it.

The reminder of the innocence of that day momentarily stung Jocelyn's heart.

“Lord,”
she prayed quietly as she went,
“my mother
's heart is so sore when I recall the happy times of my once carefree daughter. I miss those times
, Lord. And I miss dear Amanda.”

Merely thinking her name in silent prayer brought a lump to Lady Rutherford's throat. She paused, glanced away across the downs, as if the motion and air and sunshine might keep the tears from rising too far.

The daughter for whom she prayed, her second child, had been in London three years. Jocelyn had not seen her since the day of her somber and strained departure.

“She was so full of life
, Father,”
she whispered after a minute or two.
“Fill
her with your life again. Remind her of the happy
times we had together. Bring to her remembrance the love
and vitality of our family, the walks and rides and laughter, and especially how her father and I loved her. Plant within her a longing for the peacefulness of Devonshire
, that when the time is right she will remember Heathersleigh . . . and know it is always her home.”

Jocelyn arrived at length at the top of the same little knoll up which the two children had run, and where Amanda had plucked the daisy that had so captivated her for a brief moment. She knelt down, amid many blossoms now. Yet when her hand reached out, it picked a new bud not quite open. She gazed tenderly at it for a moment.

“Here is my daughter, Lord,”
prayed the mother,
“not yet fully in bloom. Restore her childlikeness, even
in the midst of the great city's tumult. Protect
her, watch over her. Shine your light upon her—yes
, and send your rains as well, that when the time comes for her to truly bloom, she will open the face of her heart toward you, and know you to be her Father.”

 6 
Sister Suffragettes

Chants of “Votes for women . . . votes for women!” filled the air.

Marchers filled a busy London street from one side to the other. It was Friday, November 18—soon to be known as Black Friday. Most of those present were dressed nicely, as was the custom of women who had time on their hands.

Half the protesters carried placards. All noisily proclaimed the case for women's rights.

Their bannerettes read “Asquith Has Vetoed the Bill” and “Where There's a Bill, There's a Way.” The marchers had been summoned because it had at last become painfully clear that British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith intended to do nothing to move what was known as the Conciliation Bill on to its vital third reading in the House of Commons.

The bill, which would have given about a million women in Great Britain the vote, it was now clear, was merely designed to mollify the suffragettes. After passing its first reading, Mr. Asquith allowed it to languish, and Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst had finally had enough. Her husband, the late Liberal barrister from Manchester, had been the author of the first women's suffrage bill in Great Britain in the late 1860s, and had remained at the forefront of the fight for women's rights throughout his life. His wife had then taken up the cause where he left off. By this time, the name Emmeline Pankhurst had become synonymous in Great Britain, not merely with women's suffrage
itself, but with growing militancy. She had become a political force to be reckoned with, and everyone in Parliament knew it.

The fact that little more than half the women, and none of the men who chanced to pass, paid these protesters heed only roused the passions of the orators yet higher.

As they went, more women joined them, and gradually the crowds on the sidewalks also increased. Toward the rear, a handful of rabble-rousers and students with nothing better to do, young men mostly, seemed intent on disruption.

Perceiving the opportunity for a good time at the expense of the demonstrators, these hecklers followed along, tossing out comments of rebuke. The taunts and shouts began good-naturedly. But now, with the activists returning in kind, throwing challenge back to challenge, some of the jeers grew lewd, others angry. But still the women kept on.

Meanwhile, the police, who had been alerted of the march in advance, were already on the way. In the distance a few sirens and whistles sounded their approach.

The year was 1910, and the suffragette movement in England was picking up steam. Whether the island kingdom would witness the advent of universal suffrage anytime soon may have been doubtful. But proponents of the cause were certainly making themselves heard around the world—not only in Britain, but in Finland, New Zealand, and across the Atlantic in America.

Beside Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters Christabel and Sylvia marched their twenty-year-old protégée, Amanda Rutherford.

That the daughter of Sir Charles and Lady Jocelyn Rutherford of Devonshire had so actively joined their cause gave special delight to the leaders of the movement. Their enthusiasm was heightened in that Rutherford himself—former leader in the House of Commons and, prior to his sudden and unexpected retirement six years ago, considered by many a leading candidate for the premiership in the 1905 elections—had given no public statements to discourage speculation that perhaps he was in support of his daughter's position.

Sir Charles and Lady Jocelyn had been thorough modernists prior to their conversion to the Christian faith during their daughter's seventh year. And though the change in their lives at the time was total—leading to Charles' retirement from Parliament and Amanda's alienation from the rest of the family—they yet recognized their
daughter as a free moral agent accountable for her own decisions. They had not prevented her leaving once they saw that her mind was set. If their daughter was thankful for anything about her parents, she was grateful for that.

Amanda Rutherford was now making the most of that freedom.

During the years between her twelfth and seventeenth birthdays, the increasing constraint of the family's new spiritual values created more and more estrangement from father and mother, as well as from brother and sister. Other than the judgment her parents had shown in allowing Amanda the freedom to leave home, she viewed her family as hopelessly prudish and backward in their thinking.

Her older brother George showed every sign of entering adulthood the perfect image, as Amanda thought, of his father—obedient, dull, and unimaginative. He was good-looking enough, she supposed, and quite a skilled horseman. But the fact that he had full parental favor resting upon his shoulders was enough in itself to make Amanda resent him. Father and brother were typical of the weak sort of masculinity to which women were forced to spend their lives in meek compliance. That George had almost immediately given himself submissively to their parents' new religious perspectives annoyed her all the more.

Where her younger sister Catharine stood on matters of so-called faith, Amanda didn't know, and cared even less. The two girls had never talked about it. But Catharine probably went along with all the Christian nonsense too. That was the trouble with them all—they were stuck in the dreary Victorian past.

Amanda tried to convince herself that she loved justice, that she cared for the downtrodden and unprivileged, that she was a pioneer for modernism in the new century. But her activism was mostly just a means to an end—a way out of the drab and constricting confines of Heathersleigh Hall. If she was a wild sprout on the Rutherford family line, she certainly did not recognize herself as such, but rather saw herself as a bold and progressive thinker who would have an impact in society and the world. Notwithstanding her childish words to her father about becoming prime minister one day, Amanda Rutherford had matured enough to realize that Great Britain's government would probably not be headed by a woman in her lifetime. But still she remembered Queen Victoria's words on the day her father had been
knighted. Amanda had never forgotten her vow to “turn the world on its ear” in one way or another.

Her opportunity had arrived in 1907. Shopping in Bristol, mother and daughters chanced upon a suffragette rally at which the two Pankhurst girls were speaking to a small crowd of ladies. Hearing their words and ignoring the protestations of her mother, sixteen-year-old Amanda had crossed the street and was immediately entranced with what met her ears. Not only did the message find sympathy with her fiery spirit, the two young ladies, whom she later discovered to be Christabel and Sylvia, seemed not that many years older than herself. By the end of the afternoon a friendship among the three young women had sprouted which nothing would be able to dim.

How different can be two persons' perception of the same event. To Amanda the encounter signaled the beginning of her emancipation. To her mother it signaled the end, she prayed temporarily, of her relationship with her daughter.

Even now, three years later, it caused Jocelyn Rutherford renewed pain and a few tears to recall the conversation which had followed two or three months after the Bristol incident, when Amanda had presented herself to both her parents in the drawing room of Heathersleigh Hall.

————

I received a letter from Sylvia Pankhurst today,” she said. “They are moving to London and have invited me to live with them there and join the movement. I have decided to accept their offer.”

A heavy silence followed. The announcement was the last thing either Jocelyn or her husband had expected so soon after Amanda's seventeenth birthday.

“This comes as quite a shock,” she managed to say after a moment. “Surely . . . you must realize that we need time to think it over.”

“I told you when Father resigned from Parliament,” Amanda went on, “that I was determined to make
my
life count for something. Your beliefs are not mine. I want to make a difference in the world, and this offers me an opportunity. The world is changing. The Pankhursts are in the middle of it. I want to be part of it too.”

A brief conversation ensued.

“You are making a serious mistake, Amanda,” said Charles Rutherford in a soft voice after the cool exchange.

“Not in my eyes,” she replied.

“That will not prevent you from the consequences of it.”

As father and daughter spoke, the mother did her best not to cry, but the struggle was proving unsuccessful.

Ignoring the fatherly injunction, the daughter went on.

“I am asking for nothing,” Amanda said. “I know George is the eldest and is your favorite—”

“Oh, Amanda—don't say such things,” Jocelyn pleaded. “You must know that we love you.”

Amanda drew in a deep breath but managed to conceal her annoyance at the words that sounded hollow in her ears.

“I am requesting nothing, Father,” she repeated. “I know Heathersleigh and all that goes with it will be George's someday. But if it is your plan to give me any portion of your inheritance, I would like to ask you to give it to me now so that I may use it to begin my new life in the city.”

Again a lengthy silence followed.

“Whatever you wish, my child,” the lord of the manor said at length, even more softly than before.

Jocelyn was unable any longer to keep the tears from flowing. Thankfully the strained interview did not last much longer.

————

A month after that talk with her parents, Amanda Rutherford, with all her worldly possessions and a cheque from her father for three thousand pounds, had departed from Devonshire to begin a new and exciting life in London.

Amanda had now been in the city almost three years. Father and mother had not seen her since.