From Across the Ancient Waters

by Michael Phillips

  “She’s a fine woman, your Grannie.”

  “N–not everyone thinks so,” replied Gwyneth, walking toward the Westbrooke groom, one of her few friends in the place.

  “Not everyone has eyes to see people as they are,” he rejoined with a smile. “But I know what she’s made of. Are you taking your shoes to the cobbler?” he added, nodding toward her hands. “He won’t be working today, I’m thinking.”

  “No. I took them off s–s–so I could feel the sand in my t–t–toes.”

  “The sand is one thing, hard streets are another.”

  “The shoes are more uncomfortable than the stones. I’d n–n–never wear shoes if I didn’t have to!”

  “The mare’s done,” said a voice behind them. The next moment appeared from the shadows the hulking form of the smithy. With a blackened leather apron tied around his thick waist, rippling muscular chest and arms bare and perspiring from his work over the fiery forge, leather reins held in his gloved hands, the huge man led the horse out into the street with a slow clop, clop, clop behind him. His great black eyebrows creased and his eyes darkened as he saw with whom his customer had taken up conversation. He handed the reins to the groom and turned inside without another word.

  “You see you’re not the only one concerned about shoes,” said Radnor as he began walking along the street with Gwyneth at his side. “But I came to the horse cobbler to get a new set of shoes for Red Rhud, not get them taken off like you did yours. Would you like to lead her?”

  “Oh, yes!” exclaimed Gwyneth. “M–m–may I really?”

  With a smile, the groom handed her the reins.

  Gwyneth dropped her two shoes on the hard-packed dirt then took the reins with one hand and with the other gently stroked the long face and nose and whispered a few unintelligible words to the mare.

  Radnor picked up her shoes and resumed on his way.

  Gwyneth followed, speaking quietly to the great beast at her side. Despite her occasionally wild behavior with a rider on her back, the huge mare gave every appearance of being perfectly content to be led by such a tiny girl. “W–why does Red Rhud need new shoes?” asked Gwyneth at length.

  “To keep from picking up pebbles and getting bruises in her hooves.”

  “Don’t the nails hurt?” said Gwyneth, who had watched the shoeing process many times at her father’s side.

  “Nay, lassie. The smithy-cobbler knows what’s good for horses. He would never hurt them. It’s like our own Master does—sometimes things that look like they hurt keep us from worse trouble in the end.”

  “That’s like something Grannie would say.”

  “A fine and a wise woman,” rejoined the groom. “She’s one who knows the ways of the Master. And, young lady,” he added, “it seems we’re nearly to her door.” He took several steps toward the cottage in front of them then called into its open door, “I brought you a visitor, Mrs. Barrie!”

  An elderly woman appeared a moment later. She shielded her eyes from the sun as she emerged from inside. “Who’s your great friend there, Gwyneth dear?” she said.

  “Red Rhud, Grannie.”

  A smile spread across the old woman’s face. She and the groom shook hands and exchanged a few words. “Won’t you join Gwyn and me for tea, Mr. Radnor?” she asked.

  “You sorely tempt me, Mrs. Barrie,” he replied. “I fear my charge here would lose her patience. She’ll already be wanting her oats, I’m thinking.”

  “Then you must come back another time.”

  “I promise.” He nodded as he took the reins from the girl’s hand.

  “And here will be your shoes, young lady,” he said.

  “Thank you for letting me hold the reins, M–Mr. Radnor.”

  The groom chuckled, gave Grannie a wink, then continued out of town.

  Gwyneth and the old woman went inside.

  TWENTY–EIGHT

  Sabbath

  The day happened to be a Sunday, the Calvinist “Sabbath” for those attending the worship service at the Methodist chapel at the north end of town, and in the two houses of worship to the south, “Holy Day” for the Anglicans and “High Mass” for the Catholics.

  Percy Drummond had been in North Wales three weeks. After declining two previous invitations, he had at last decided to accompany his aunt and uncle and cousins to church. Being of the aristocracy, they were staid and respectable members of the Church of England.

  All the shops of the village were of course closed. But Kyvwlch Gwarthegydd, blacksmith and village atheist, made certain that he was vigorously and noisily at work in his blacksmith’s shop every Sunday between the hours of ten o’clock and noon. Any home or farm for probably three miles north, south, or east, might set their clocks weekly to the 10:00 a.m. hour. At the very moment Big Ben began to strike in Westminster, the rhythmic clank, clank, clank of hammer on anvil likewise began to toll loudly from Gwarthegydd’s shop. His choice of this hour was chosen because it was at ten o’clock that the first of the three church bells pealed out from the Methodist chapel, and he did his best every Sunday to drown them out. He was mostly successful, too, as he was at 11:00 a.m., when the two dissonant knells from opposing sides of the street at the opposite end of town announced the commencement of their services.

  The clanking continued, on and off, for the duration of all three services, to the supreme annoyance of the more spiritually minded of the clergy and laity of Llanfryniog. They considered the sound to be the very drumbeat of the devil from hell itself standing in brazen opposition to the truth of almighty God, whose existence the heathen blacksmith so flagrantly denied. Not a few sermons through the years had used the background discord as a fitting object lesson to rail against those who openly mocked God and the fiery retribution of judgment that awaited them.

  Neither did Hollin Radnor often spend his Sundays in church. He did not as a rule find God’s presence much in evidence in any of Llanfryniog’s three houses of worship. He visited them all from time to time, not so much looking for God, for the groom knew where He was to be found, but looking for kindred hearts that might know Him after the same manner in which he had himself grown to know Him. It was not an enterprise that had been crowned with much success through the years, but he remained hopeful of occasionally discovering such a one. No doubt that he was doctrinally fluid and nonsectarian in his acceptance of the men and women from all three congregations contributed in large measure to the fact that none of them accepted him as one of them. In such assemblies, it was always who was “one of us,” not who was “one of God’s.”

  In fact, there was no man to be found in all Snowdonia who knew God on the intimate footing of daily obedience more than did Lord Snowdon’s humble groom. As is often the case in such instances of godliness, however, few recognized that fact. As he left Grannie’s cottage and made his way back up the street and out of town on the back of the newly shod bay mare, he was surprised to see the manor’s three cousins walking along toward him.

  “Good day to you, Master Courtenay, Miss Florilyn, and Master Percy,” he said, tipping his hat as he passed.

  Percy greeted him warmly. A patronizing nod was all that came his way from the other two.

  The appearance of the three youths a few minutes after noon on the main street of Llanfryniog was not difficult to explain. It being a warm day, as they were approaching the buggy at the conclusion of the morning’s service, Percy announced that he was going to walk home. Having nothing better to do, and vaguely thinking that perhaps it might present her an opportunity to get back at Percy somehow for the grudge she was still nursing against him, Florilyn said she would join him. Inwardly chagrined at the thought, Percy could hardly object.

  Instead of following the direct route home, it was Percy’s intent to take the long way round along the beach and, if the tide was low enough to permit passage through the rocks near the cave, to continue on and up the bluff path. It only took a moment’s reflection to cause him to relish the thought of Florilyn trying t
o keep pace with him over the rocks and through the tide pools in her Sunday shoes. He and Florilyn, therefore, set off toward town.

  They were surprised a few seconds later to hear Courtenay’s steps running to catch them. Upon reflection, he thought the day might present an admirable opportunity to visit the Lorimer home, without Percy in tow, and soothe whatever ruffled feathers might remain between himself and the magistrate’s daughter.

  Roderick and Katherine Westbrooke found themselves in consequence riding home in the buggy alone.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Homegoing

  On this same day in Glasgow, a faithful minister who had given his life in service to the Church of Scotland was struggling mightily to reach the end of the morning’s service.

  The day’s reading had been taken from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. He had managed, with more than one throaty hesitation, to get through the poignant passage of scripture. But the sermon had progressed with increasing difficulty.

  He had, of course, anticipated for some time that this Sunday was coming and known what would be the morning’s text. He had agonized over it all week. More than once he had all but decided on the coward’s way out of his intensely personal difficulty. He would have one of the church elders give the New Testament reading. That would keep him from having to utter the words in public that stabbed his heart with pain: “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned. …”

  Avoiding the text itself, he would then dust off one of the stale sermons from his seminary days, written with the intent of impressing professors rather than moving hearts. Or perhaps he would follow the script in one of a half dozen volumes on his shelf of sermon outlines and notes. He would gloss over the powerful passage with a few dusty truisms. His words would thus be guaranteed to keep his own tears at bay and, at the same time, to put his listeners to sleep. One thing they would certainly never do was rouse so much as a flutter of homegoing, right-making conscience-movement in the heart of whatever unrepentant prodigals might be listening in his congregation.

  He knew as well as any man who had asked God for insight into the human condition that prodigals of all ages were alive and well in his parish. He knew that thirty-, forty-, and fifty-year-old prodigals needed to repent no less than their younger counterparts, before the matter of their prodigality became of internal import. Some, it was true, delayed their homecoming until it was too late to say the healing words. How deep must be their grief and how bitter their tears before God to realize their fathers were no longer alive to receive them into a loving embrace.

  Still … such must repent and arise … they must repent and go to their fathers.

  Homegoing is imperative, whether in this life or the next. Homegoing is the eternal imperative, the overarching must of the universe.

  How fortunate for those thirty-, forty-, fifty-, and even sixty-year-old prodigals, perhaps who have grown comfortable in their prodigality, who awake, alas, late in life, but not too late, thank God, with their fathers still alive. For they could go to their aging parents, hearts of young and old breaking together, and whisper the eternal words, “I have sinned.” However late it comes, they have the opportunity to hear the father’s long-awaited, “I love you, my child. You have always been forgiven. Welcome home.”

  Yet for most of his listening prodigals, those who bury the rebellion of youth in the deep recesses of consciousness as a blurry dream from long ago, it was easy to allow life simply to “go on” and not look back. These never face the heart-probing reality of what their words and actions inflicted into the hearts of those who sacrificed themselves on the altar of parenthood. Many indeed drift back into relationship with their elders on such a superficial foundation. In the presumed maturity of their own adulthood, the hostility of early years fading, they assume it enough to be on “speaking terms.” But as long as the underlying schism remains unhealed, it is not enough. Relational drift cannot eradicate the roots of rebellion. Only repentance can accomplish that. Outwardly respectable, these never take account before God for the hubris of their early years with the words, “Father, Mother … I sinned against you. I am sorry. I want to be a true son, a true daughter to you for the years I have left.”

  The vicar knew there were such comfortable prodigals in his church, because they existed everywhere. As the consequences of this unseen prodigality swirled through his mind, the question rose in the heart of Edward Drummond: Could he, in good conscience, deny them the opportunity of being challenged to “arise and go” because of the frail tenderness of his own suffering father’s heart? In the end, he had realized that the answer was no. He had to issue the challenge of Luke 15, whatever it might cost him personally.

  And surely it would cost him. The image of father and repentant son was too personal, too close to his own breaking heart. Yes, it would cost him! But he could not shirk his duty. He could not shirk the truth. Thus he would not shirk the challenge.

  With that decision came an even greater realization. He had to confront the reality of Luke 15 for himself. With his own son adrift in prodigality, did he, Edward Drummond … did he still believe in God’s goodness, in God’s infinite fatherhood, in the welcoming embrace of the Eternal Heart of Forgiveness?

  He could only answer that question by confronting the Fatherhood of Luke 15 in all the anguish it might cause his own heart and in all the glory of its eternal resolution.

  Truly no man nor woman can apprehend the full pathos of the prodigal story who has not stood as the waiting, praying, seeking, hurting, eager, long-suffering, grief-stricken, shattered yet patient parent of Luke 15—who has not stood on the road day after day, wept night after night, and gone out again morning after morning to stand on the road … waiting for the return of son or daughter.

  THIRTY

  Grannie

  After leaving church and passing Hollin Radnor on his way out of town, the three cousins from Westbrooke Manor made their way casually through Llanfryniog’s streets. A few others were out, mostly young boys with nothing on their minds other than that favorite pursuit of the weak-minded—seeing what amusement might chance their way now that they had been released from the prison of Sunday morning.

  Still not having seen much of the town, Percy struck off the main street with Florilyn trailing after him. Courtenay followed as well since they were moving in a general direction that would take him where he was bound. Soon they were lost in a maze of twisting and turning lanes and streets.

  Percy paused to stare down a side street where an oddly shaped purplish building caught his eye. Brother and sister continued sauntering along. They came to an open door through which they heard the whirrrrrr of a spinning wheel.

  “Look, Florilyn,” said Courtenay. “The old witch is spinning.”

  A girl walked out the door. When she saw who was standing in front of her, she turned and hurried back inside. But it was too late.

  “Hey, th–th–there, funny-looking little Gw–Gw–Gwy–neth!” taunted Courtenay. “Visiting the old w–w–w–witch today?”

  Florilyn laughed at what she supposed her brother’s wit.

  Gwyneth turned and planted her feet firmly. “G–G–Grannie’s not a w–w–witch!” she said. “Y–y–you should be ashamed of yourself, M–M–Master C–C–Courtenay!”

  “Did you hear th–th–that, Florilyn?” laughed Courtenay. “This little brat thinks I ought to be ashamed of myself! You know what I think?” he added, turning back toward Gwyneth and glaring down at her. “I think it’s you who’s the w–w–w–witch! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  By now Percy was approaching and saw who they were talking to. “Cut it out, Courtenay,” he said. “She meant no harm. Hello, Gwyneth,” he said, smiling down at her.

  “She’s just the little village idiot—that’s what she is.”

  “Leave her alone,” repeated Percy.

  “What—is she a friend of yours now?”

  “That’s right—she’s a friend of mine.”


  “So that’s how it is! That explains everything,” laughed Courtenay. “I’m hardly surprised. And she is a witch. Didn’t you hear her stutter?”

  “That doesn’t make anyone a witch.”

  “Listen to the city boy!” Courtenay spat back. “Even if she’s not a witch, she’s a half-wit.” He touched his index finger to the side of his head and winked at his sister.

  “I tell you there’s nothing wrong with her,” said Percy angrily. “That’s the trouble with cowards like you, Courtenay. You don’t know how to pick on someone your own size.”

  “You’re calling me a coward?”

  “For making fun of a girl half your size—that’s exactly what you are.”

  The words were unwisely spoken. Seconds later Percy found himself on the ground groaning. A little more on his guard after the incident in the barn, this time he managed to sidestep the quick jab from his cousin’s hand. But Courtenay was not merely bigger than Percy, he was twice as cunning. Missing with his fist, he gave a lethal swipe with his foot. Percy’s legs went out from under him, and the next instant Courtenay’s booted foot landed two well-placed kicks into the side of his ribs.

  Brother and sister continued on their way laughing at the two fools behind them.

  Percy rolled over and tried to sit up in the dirt of the street, while Gwyneth ran inside the cottage. A moment later she stooped beside him, this time with no fistful of flowers but holding a moist cloth. She handed it to him. He took it with a smile of gratitude and wiped at his dust-covered face.

  His two cousins were not yet out of sight. Glancing back and witnessing the tender scene, they could not keep themselves from the temptation to add insult to injury. They walked back toward the cottage.

  “Percy, Percy, baby Percy!” chanted Courtenay. “Witch girl taking care of baby boy from the city!”

  Florilyn was laughing so hard by now that she could scarcely contain herself. This was sweeter revenge than she had hoped for!