From Across the Ancient Waters (15 page)

“You have been in this exact place before?”

“Of course. This is near one of my special places.”

“Your … ‘special places’?”

“Yes. I have many special places where I go to visit animals and visit God and visit my mother.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Percy.

“My mother is dead, Mr. Drummond.”

“I am sorry, Gwyneth. I didn’t know that.”

“She is with God. So at my special places, I go to be alone and visit them and talk to them.”

“And one of them is near here?”

“Yes, would you like to see it?”

“I would, yes … very much. But isn’t it a private special place?”

“It is
my
special place. So I can bring anyone to it. Remember, Mr. Drummond, you are my friend now, not a stranger. The flowers made us friends. So I can show it to you.”

She continued to lead Percy through the thick wood. They came a few minutes later to a little brook. It was no more than a foot or two wide and could have been easily stepped across. Instead, Gwyneth turned and led Percy along the edge of it. They were still descending from the same ridge where they had begun.

The brook was swift and noisy, splashing over rocks and pebbles, creating tiny little waterfalls as it went. Its water was brown and foamy from the mountains and hills of peat through which it came.

They continued another ten or fifteen minutes. The downward slope grew less steep as they reached the bottom between this ridge and the next one westward. Through a dense growth of pines they went in single file, until it suddenly opened into a clearing.

In front of him, Percy beheld a secluded meadow in the midst of the wood. It was perhaps twenty yards wide and fifty long, flat and grassy. The brook they had been following flowed through the center of it, where it tumbled into a pond that was deep enough, because the water was brown, that the bottom was not visible.

Gwyneth stopped and gazed about. The smile of pleasure on her face said clearly enough that her heart was full of delight to share her discovery with a friend.

“It’s beautiful, Gwyneth!” exclaimed Percy. The sound of his own voice almost startled him. Except for the gentle babbling of the stream, the place was so secluded that utter stillness reigned. “This must be your special place.”

Gwyneth nodded.

“How did you find it?”

“I came upon it when I was exploring in the woods. So I kept coming here and made friends with the animals.”

“Animals come when you are here?”

“Only deer and rabbits. I don’t think they will come today because they don’t know you. They will be afraid. It took them a long time before they realized they didn’t need to be afraid of me. Come and sit by the pond. That’s where I sit when I come.”

Percy followed her across the grass, and they sat down.

After a minute or two of silence, Gwyneth spoke. “God, this is Mr. Drummond,” she said simply.

Surprised, Percy looked over at her.

Gwyneth was staring into the pond. “I’m sure You know him already,” she went on, “but he has not been here before. He is a good man. He is kind to everyone. He is visiting at the manor, but they are not kind to him. Mummy, I want you to know Mr. Drummond, too.”

Percy listened spellbound. He did not want to intrude upon one of the most unusual one-sided conversations he had ever heard in his life. For one who had always associated prayer with his father’s prayers from the pulpit or at the table, the simplicity of Gwyneth’s conversation with God was almost too much to take in. Especially hearing her speaking to God about him!

This was, as Percy had said, Gwyneth’s own private place. No one else in the whole world, or so Gwyneth thought, except now for Percy, knew of it. Sitting here, not necessarily thinking or praying about anything in particular, but
feeling
it, silently moved her with the invisible music of creation. She did not always talk aloud when she came to the pond in the wood. She spoke as she did on this day so that Percy could share in her thoughts.

When Gwyneth felt the silent mysteries of the world and felt the tunes of God’s music inside her, all creation made her happy. At such times her whole being was at prayer, for she was swallowed up in the expansive presence of God Himself.

There are those who only associate what they call prayer with formality and words and churches and mealtimes and public worship. But from a young age, Gwyneth had intuitively known, though no one had taught her, that all motions of heart and brain sent heavenward were prayers, for they went into the heart of Him who treasured the uplifted thoughts of His children.

After some long minutes of silence, Gwyneth stood. “We should leave now, Mr. Drummond,” she said. “We have a long way to go. I want to be home before my papa gets home from the mine.”

They left the meadow on the opposite side from where they had entered it and started up the next in a series of several ridges that still lay between them and the sea.

“Your father works in the mine, does he?” asked Percy as they went. “A coal mine?”

“No, Mr. Drummond. The slate mine. There is no coal here, only slate. There is a gold mine, too, somewhere not very far away, but my papa works in the slate mine.”

“There is gold in Snowdonia?” said Percy in surprise.

“Yes, but not as much as slate.”

“Gold is more valuable.”

“My papa says that, too. He says that much of the gold of Snowdonia lies under the hills where no one has yet found it.”

“Does he know where? Why doesn’t he look for it?”

“Papa says that dreams of gold cannot buy potatoes. But slate can because it is no dream. Grannie has seen real gold, though I have never seen it.”

Before Percy could question her further about the remarkable turn the conversation had taken, they entered a dense grove of trees. They were occupied for some time getting through it with a minimum of scratches.

By the time they came near the crest of the final ridge an hour later, Percy was feeling the effects of the afternoon’s ride and walk. He would definitely sleep well that night!

They had been climbing steadily through a rocky hillside of pine. Ahead they appeared nearly to have reached the top of the incline.

Gwyneth stopped. “We have come to another of my special places,” she said.

Percy glanced about but saw nothing to distinguish the hill they had been climbing. “Where?” he said.

“Right there,” answered Gwyneth pointing in front of them. “Just ahead, at the top of the hill, there between those trees. We will walk through them, and then it will be downhill the rest of the way.”

“What makes this a special place?”

“You will see when we get to the top. Come.”

Gwyneth had brought Percy along this particular route for the very purpose of the overlook that was suddenly about to present itself when their vision rose over the crest in front of them. She had discovered it years ago and never tired of the stunning revelation as her head came up slowly over the top of the hill.

With Percy beside her, having no idea what was coming, Gwyneth continued slowly. They emerged through the trees at the crest. Two or three more steps brought their eyes above it … and lo! There was the whole of the coastline spread out below them in the glorious splendor of late afternoon.

The great ocean seemingly stretched out before them to infinity from the Lleyn Peninsula ahead and to their right, into the distance where their vision finally failed somewhere in the direction of Barmouth Bay to their left. Below them the plateau of Mochras Head extended out into the deep blue of Tremadog Bay. From this vantage point of a mile or more from the shoreline, and so high above it, the sea and all the countryside inland was eerily silent. A gentle breeze off the ocean met their faces as they came over the rise. Faint reminders of salt spray were borne upon it. The wide panorama, so alive yet so silent, appeared as a painting rather than the resplendent reality it was.

The silence surrounding them was deeper than silence, a
full
silence because the whole of North Wales lay in front of them. It pulsed with the energy of being, of life, yet no sound, not even of the gulls soaring along the cliffs at the shoreline, reached them.

Percy had never beheld such a sight. As the view overflowed his senses, a sensation stabbed his soul with an almost physical longing for something he desired but felt he could never attain.

The reaction that followed was not what Gwyneth had expected.

He stood gaping for a few moments at the majestic overlook, slowly shaking his head in wonder and disbelief. Then suddenly he broke into laughter. “Gwyneth!” he exclaimed. “You did it. You brought me out of the wilderness, from wherever we were to … just look … to here! There’s the manor! There is the sea—glorious, blue, radiant! I’m back … you brought me home!”

Without warning, he turned, grabbed her two hands, and began dancing and skipping about with joyful abandon.

Gywneth giggled with childlike happiness.

Round and round they danced in the clearing between the trees. Finally Percy let go, spun around one more time for good measure, then threw himself on what sparse dry grass grew at the crest of the ridge and stared out toward the sea.

Slowly Gwyneth lay down beside him.

It quieted again. Neither spoke. They lay side by side perhaps ten minutes. The dome of the sky overhead appeared to meet the edge of the sea at the horizon in an unbroken continuity of blue.

But the line between them was not as unbroken as it seemed.

“Can you see Ireland?” said Gwyneth after some time.

“No,” said Percy. “Is it really out there?”

“Yes—straight across the ocean.”

“Can you see it?”

“I think so,” said Gwyneth a little hesitantly. “Sometimes I imagine I can when I really can’t. But from here on the clearest of days I
know
I see it. There is a tiny bit of haze today so I cannot be completely sure.”

“Maybe you have the second sight,” said Percy, more lightheartedly than serious.

But Gwyneth took in his words earnestly. “Papa says I do,” she said. “I don’t even know what it means. But look—surely you can see the tiny bumps of land out there … at the edge of the ocean.”

Percy squinted and sent his eyes back and forth. “Yes … there it is,” he exclaimed. “I do see it—you’re right!”

“You must have second sight, too, Mr. Drummond.”

Percy laughed. “I doubt that. So, that is Ireland across there?”

“Yes. My mother was from Ireland.”

“Was she indeed?”

“Yes. My father married her in Ireland. He says she was really Welsh, though I don’t understand about all that. I was born there. Then we came back here to Wales, though I was just a baby and cannot remember. There was a terrible storm at sea, and my mother died. So when we arrived here, my father and I were alone.”

“I am sorry, Gwyneth,” said Percy. “It must be hard not to have a mother.”

“I don’t know what having a mother is like. But I have the best father in the world. Perhaps God knew that I could do without a mother for a while. But I will see her again.”

They lay a few more minutes in silence. The scents of the sea breezes continued to drift up the sloping moor to meet them. The peace of the world enveloped them in its embrace.

Gwyneth’s Offer

A
s Percy and Gwyneth romped down the ridge toward the plateau of Mochras Head, laughing and talking gaily, they were being watched.

Exulting in her supposed triumph over her cousin for the two hours since she had returned to the manor, Florilyn had been eagerly awaiting Percy’s arrival. If he somehow managed to find his way home before dark, she could not wait to greet him face-to-face and watch him lose his temper with her.

She knew he would not hurt her. But if she could make him yell at her—or even swear aloud!—she would count the day a wonderful success. If she could somehow badger him into doing so in front of her father or mother, whose movements she was carefully watching for exactly that purpose, so much the better. A victory over a rival, in her opinion, was infinitely sweeter if he could be humiliated in front of witnesses. She never took out her revenge on her brother in private. She hoped to do the same with her cousin.

Seeing him now coming toward the manor with the tiny white-haired brat, Gwyneth Barrie, however, filled her with sudden uneasiness. Something didn’t look right.

They were laughing! Percy didn’t appear the least bit upset!

“Well, Gwyneth,” Percy was saying, “I thank you for a most enjoyable afternoon … and for rescuing me! If you hadn’t been watching out for me like a guardian angel, I would still be out there wandering around in circles. I shall be more careful in the future when Florilyn baits me into a race.”

“Do you think you will race her again, Mr. Drummond?”

“I don’t know. I hope not!” Percy laughed. “It’s humiliating being trounced by a girl—no offense to you.”

“Would you like to beat her in a race?”

“Would I ever!” Percy laughed again. “But that’s easier said than done. As irritating as she is, she happens to be very good on the back of a horse.”

“You
could
beat her.”

“How?”

“I could teach you,” said Gwyneth simply.

Percy stared back, wondering if he had heard correctly.

“You … could teach me to ride faster than Florilyn?”

“Yes, Mr. Drummond.”

“You know horses that well?”

She nodded.

“I should say, you know how to
ride
that well?”

“Yes, Mr. Drummond. I could help you learn to ride like the wind.”

Percy could not help himself. He broke out laughing at the delicious humor of the suggestion. The girl was such an innocent! But she had not yet said a word to him that was untrue. He had already come to feel a supreme confidence in whatever she told him.

What did he have to lose?

“You’re on, Gwyneth Barrie,” he said, still chuckling at the thought. “I accept your offer.”

Gwyneth glanced toward the manor and realized they had come closer than she had intended. She thought she had seen Florilyn by the house watching them. She paused, suddenly nervous, then began to leave him.