4 
A Little Girl Named Chelsea

Amanda rode into Milverscombe, tied her horse, and absently walked into one of the town’s few shops. She had nothing on her mind to do other than distract herself from the unpleasant reminders that the visit to Maggie had stirred up within her. She did not necessarily want to avoid the thoughts—she knew this time of growth was necessary—but did not want to be alone with them.

“Hello, Miss Rutherford,” said the shopkeeper warmly as she entered. “Is there something I can help you find?”

“No, but thank you, Mrs. Feldstone,” replied Amanda. “I just thought I would look at some of your fabric.”

Amanda wandered through the few bolts of cloth the shop had on hand and toward the back of the store. But in her present frame of mind nothing here was of interest. She smiled at the round-faced woman and left, continuing along the street in the direction of the station.

Suddenly she heard footsteps behind her running along the boarded walk. She turned and saw a girl of eleven or twelve whom she did not recognize running toward her. The moment she saw Amanda turn, the girl stopped.

For an uncertain second or two they stared at one another. At last the girl spoke.

“You’re Amanda Rutherford,” she said excitedly.

“Yes . . . yes, I am,” replied Amanda. “How did you know?”

“Oh, I know who you are. My mother told me how you went to London to join the suffragettes. It was so exciting. I always wanted to be like you.”

The sting of hot tears filled Amanda’s eyes and she looked away. She could not hold the gaze even of a little girl for the shame of what she had just heard.

After a moment she turned back, brushed at her eyes, and knelt down.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Chelsea . . . Chelsea Winters,” said the girl.

“Oh yes,” smiled Amanda, “now I remember . . . I know your mother.” She paused, looking earnestly into the girl’s face. “Chelsea,” she went on seriously. “I am going to tell you something I hope you will remember and think about.”

The girl’s eyes returned Amanda’s stare with wide silence.

“I am not a person you should want to be like, Chelsea,” Amanda went on. “When I was your age I did not know how much my parents loved me. I did not pay enough attention to what they told me, and it landed me in a great deal of trouble.”

The awestruck expression on the face gazing back at her sobered.

“Do you understand, Chelsea?”

Slowly the girl nodded.

“Be a good girl, Chelsea, not a proud and selfish one like Amanda Rutherford was.”

Amanda felt her voice beginning to fail her. She rose and walked away, leaving little Chelsea Winters silently staring after her.

————

Somehow the day passed. When shadows of evening began to lengthen, Elsbet’s stout little legs were easily fifteen or twenty miles along the coast away from the town she had never set foot outside of before that day. Even had her father’s murderers known they had been observed, they could never hope to find her now.

Night gradually fell. Fear mingled with her hatred for the evil men, and Elsbet knew she must find a place to hide for the night. She began to look for a crevice in the hills along the water.

She crept into a cave and lay down in exhaustion. Weariness was her best friend on this most dreadful first night, for it dulled her brain and made her drowsy. With the sounds of the waves lulling together in her mind with memories of her father, she finally cried herself to sleep.

Within less than fifty feet from the water’s edge, the fatherless girl managed to pass a fitful night.

Elsbet Conlin awoke to the same rhythmic sounds of water slopping and sloshing at the rocks that had lulled her to sleep outside the mouth of the cave. As she drank in the sound, her first few moments of wakefulness were peaceful.

Suddenly the terrible nightmare crashed back upon her. She wept the bitter tears of the motherless who was now suddenly fatherless as well. With renewed horror, visions of the previous day returned, adding tenfold to her sense of isolation, and a hundredfold to the hatred digging itself deep into her soul.

Elsbet shivered. In the chilly morning, the coldness of life overwhelmed her. She was damp to the bone with the sticky, clammy, salty dew of the sea.

She rose and left the cave, seeking movement and activity as the sole antidote for her grief. The morning was grey and still, the sun not yet up. At last she had begun to feel pangs of hunger and was very thirsty. She knew her temporary shelter offered no hope of satisfying either.

She soon quenched her thirst in a small stream tumbling down the rocks into the ocean a half mile farther on. With no destination in mind, she continued in the direction she had been walking, moving along the shore itself and occasionally on the bluffs overlooking the sea, her father’s cryptic words the sole motivating force pushing her steps along.

The sun rose, the day warmed, and still she walked. By midday, hunger had asserted itself more vigorously. The birds overhead and an occasional rabbit or squirrel brought interest to the day and gave her something alive to talk to and share her struggle with against the elements.

By afternoon the conclusion had grown obvious that she was unlikely to find anything to eat on her present course and that food and water would be more accessible inland. Thus she gradually turned away from the sea into a region of desolate countryside.

Even legs that are small make good time when they keep moving, and by the evening of the second day of her sojourn she had indeed covered a good distance, probably forty or more miles from the place she once called home. Without knowing anything of the borders of the land, she had by now left Cornwall behind and was walking through the county of England called Devonshire.

Despite her hunger, sleep came that night more easily. Dusk had scarcely fallen when her legs fairly collapsed beneath her in the hollow of an open field.

The next day she continued on again, drinking from streams but still finding nothing to eat but some berries that only succeeded in giving her a stomachache. She began to encounter a few cows and sheep, but was afraid of the people she saw in the fields tending them and kept out of sight. What if they were all killers?

By nightfall she was famished. For a third night since her departure from the town, darkness closed around her.

She trudged on. The night deepened. At length she saw a building ahead. She knew she was now in a more peopled region and that it might not be safe to sleep in the open. The few drops of rain that had begun to fall added to her resolve. As she approached the building, she heard the familiar sounds of animals. She was not afraid of them!

She continued forward. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open and from inside came the homey smells of horseflesh, grass, and feed.

She crept inside the dry barn and was soon fast asleep on a pile of hay.