Never had the somber gray walls of Stonewycke, with snow now piled up against them, seemed more like home to Logan as they did that Christmas of 1942. How good it was to be back! He knew now—in a deeper way than ever—what it meant to be part of something greater than himself—a cause, a family, a faith. He knew they were worth the sacrifice of commitment, the surrendering of his whole self.
He stood by the crackling blaze in the hearth of the family room, watching as Allison strung the last bit of tinsel on the tree.
It was a somber holiday season. There had been great suffering and deep griefs. Alec was still in Africa. Ian had managed to obtain a furlough, but would not be home until the first week in January. May’s presence—home from her studies in the States to announce her engagement to a young American law student—added a spark of gaiety to the festivities. Yet the joy pervading the small gathering at Stonewycke that Christmas Eve could not help but be of a rather quiet kind.
Logan saw the contrast most visibly on Allison’s face. The outward show of Christmas happiness could not keep an occasional tear from trickling down her cheek. He walked over and placed an arm around her waist. Despite the trembling of her lips, she smiled up at him.
“She always used to grab at the tinsel,” she said, “because it was so sparkling and pretty.”
“I suppose this time of year will always be the most difficult.” Logan knew she spoke of their daughter.
“Last year, in London, it was just the two of us, you were gone. It was such a sad, bleak time. But we decorated the tree, and . . . oh, Logan, if only I’d known it would be our last Christmas together!” Allison stifled a sob.
Logan gently stroked her hair while holding her tenderly.
“I have thought often of the gospel story and of Mary since then,” Allison finally went on. “The moment her son was born was a time of joy mixed with sorrows too. Losing our daughter has helped me understand maybe a little of what she felt in her heart. What does it say in Luke? ‘Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.’ She knew the true meaning of bittersweet joy. I am so happy that you are alive, Logan, and that we are at last together. Yet I cannot help feeling sad also.”
“I know,” said Logan gently. “There is something about Christmas that always brings out the extremes of feeling, the happiness that is, the memories of what was.”
“Will it always be so?”
“Right now our wounds are still raw and tender. But one day, Ali, we will be able to lift up each precious memory of our dear little Joanna, and those visions of her will be to us the pure joy that God intended. God doesn’t mind a little sorrow for a season. But we mustn’t allow our grief to force us to abandon those memories.”
“It’s just so hard, especially when I remember her smiling, happy face.”
“I know, dear,” replied Logan. “But you have to remember, we do not live in this world only. She is alive. God has chosen us for a great honor. For those who have lost a son or daughter can feel, in ways we cannot know except through such loss, part of the enormity of what God did in allowing His Son to die. Even in our sadness, and in your mother’s grief over Nat, we are able to partake in the divine grief of the universe—the shedding of God’s blood for the sins of mankind. It is a privilege to know that kind of heartache, and then be able to give it up to His care.”
“You’re right, Logan. Where did you get such wisdom?”
Logan laughed lightly. “I don’t know. I guess sorrow has a way of forcing people into greater understanding of things they can’t see when life is perfectly smooth. I don’t think God is as concerned with giving happy endings to our lives as He is forcing us into greater depths of laying down of self. For of course, that’s where true joy originates—not from surface happiness, but from giving ourselves up to Him. I suppose if there’s anything I’ve learned from this past year, it’s that. Begun to learn, I should say! I’m still such an infant, Allison, in trying to see from a new perspective.”
“Oh, Logan, I am thankful for what God is doing in our lives. But the growth can be so painful.”
“It usually is. Progress never comes without a struggle.”
“And I am thankful for you, Logan!”
At that moment Joanna came in carrying a tray of refreshments.
“I made some wassail for us to toast the season,” she said, setting the tray on a table and pouring portions of the punch into four glasses.
“Where’s May?” asked Logan.
“In the kitchen putting the finishing touches on some scones. She’ll be here in a minute.”
While they were waiting, Joanna walked toward the large window and stood looking out into the black night. Behind her the warm fire crackled cheerily, oblivious to the stormy winter night outside. Tiny white flakes of powdery snow swirled and danced against the darkened pane, collecting against the bottom corners of the windows. When she turned back toward the others, her face wore the same mixture of emotion Allison and Logan had been feeling.
“You know,” she said softly, “I haven’t felt much of a holiday spirit this year. It’s not been an easy time for any of us, these last months. But just now, as I was thinking, I remembered my first meal in this place. I suppose the fire reminded me of it, though it was in the old banquet hall. That was the day I first knew that Dorey was my grandfather.”
Joanna paused, and sighed deeply. Clearly the memory was filled with feelings of many kinds.
“Poor Dorey and Maggie were separated for over forty years,” Joanna went on. “Our heartaches can’t begin to compare with theirs. Yet look what kind of people they became in the end! Who wouldn’t want to radiate love like they each did? Yet the price is high. Suffering is often the price we have to pay for true joy . . . true compassion. They paid the price, and their characters reflected the result. I want God to do that kind of work in my heart too, yet I resist and complain just to be separated from my dear husband for a year or two. Yes, I’ve lost a son, yet not really lost him—only given him back to God for a while.”
She stopped. Allison went to her.
“Oh, Mother,” she said, “you seem so strong to us. When I think of Lady Margaret’s faith, I think immediately of you, too.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Joanna, wiping a solitary tear from her eye. “You are a daughter to be proud of.—God, help us all to give ourselves to your work in our hearts!” The mother and daughter embraced warmly, while Logan silently looked on, his own tears rising.
All at once the door leading toward the kitchen burst open.
In walked May, a bright smile on her spunky twenty-year-old face. “The scones are ready!” she announced as she bore the wooden tray to the table. “Complete with fresh butter from the Cunningham farm, churned today, and the berry jam Mrs. Galbreath sent up from town!”
“Ah, May!” said Logan, “how glad we three are that you could come home to join us! What would Christmas be without scones . . . and at least one carefree face among us? Right, ladies?” he added, with a grin toward Allison and Joanna.
They laughed.
“Come,” said Joanna, “it is time to remember what the season is about.”
They each took their glasses and lifted them toward one another.
“To those,” said Logan, “whom we love who cannot be with us.”
“May the Lord bless them, one and all,” added May, “and give them peace.”
“Help us to remember them in prayer,” said Allison.
“And,” added Joanna, “may the new year see us together again! Thank you, Lord, for the birth of your Son!”
———
The new year was not to bring the kind of reunion Joanna had hoped for. The war was to rage on for nearly three more years.
There were, however, major Allied advances throughout 1943. By mid year the Allies controlled the Mediterranean and most of the major sea routes. Alec was able to spend a week in Scotland during the summer before being sent to a new assignment. Ian, now twenty-five, had to continue to postpone his university studies.
In September, Italy surrendered unconditionally, and in the following year, June of 1944, the long-awaited invasion of Europe finally took place. Many of Logan’s trainees played a vital role in preparing the way for the advance of troops which followed the landing. On August 24 the first Allies reached Paris, and the next day Charles de Gaulle drove through the city in an open car, to the wild cheering of thousands of Parisians. In the months that followed a million arrests were made in France of Nazi collaborators, with tens of thousands of summary executions. It would be many years before real peace would be restored to the torn nation.
The “thousand year Reich” finally collapsed in May of 1945, with Japan capitulating a few months later in the wake of the world’s first nuclear explosion on a massive scale.
Thus the glories of victory continued to be mingled with the ongoing horrors of war. But the millions of returning soldiers did not need newspaper accounts of the destruction of Hiroshima to remind them that the world was forever changed. They were changed men. Some were emotionally destroyed, some had allowed the experience to broaden them. Relationships had been forged which would never be forgotten. War had caused both strengths and weaknesses to surface. Most had grown, all had changed, and they well knew that the world they now faced was changed, too.
In Britain, the old ways, long slowly fading, were now all but gone. Though she had, almost single-handedly, kept back facism from taking over Europe in 1940, Britain would never again be the economic and military powerhouse she had been in the pre-war years. New alignments of power would soon emerge, which would change the political and military landscape of the twentieth century forever.
The post-war years would bring these new times, with their accompanying stresses, to the northern Scottish estate of Stonewycke as well. Though the soldiers returned, they did not bring with them a return to the world of the 1920’s. A new era had dawned.