From Across the Ancient Waters (33 page)

Being a few days later to arrive than previously planned, as he had notified them by telegram, Percy set about his studies in earnest almost the next day. He subsequently remained home every evening buried in his books. No mention was ever made of his former friendships or activities on the streets.

About two months later, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, Percy sought his father in his study. He had been thinking through the interview ever since arriving home. But it had taken time to collect his thoughts and summon the courage to do what he knew he had to do … and
wanted
to do. He also had wanted to wait long enough to be certain he would not fall into old patterns.

“May I talk with you, Father?” he asked. His voice betrayed anxiety. Gone entirely was the arrogance he might have displayed a short time earlier.

“Of course, Percy,” replied his father. “Come in … have a seat.”

“If you don’t mind, what I have to say I think is best said on my feet.”

The vicar nodded.

Percy glanced toward the ground, then looked up again and drew in a deep breath. “I, uh … I don’t exactly know how to say this,” he began. “It’s not an easy thing to do, but … well, I’ve come to apologize.”

Still his father waited, listening patiently and with deep love in his eyes for this son who was about to become a man.

“I, uh … I’ve been nothing more than a fool these past couple of years,” Percy went on. “Now that I look back on it, I can’t imagine what I was thinking. You once asked me what kind of evil spirit had taken over inside me, and I can’t think of any other explanation. When I try to recall exactly
why
I was so angry and full of resentment, I cannot think of a single good reason. You and Mother are the best and kindest and most loving parents I could hope to have. You gave me everything. You trained me well. You are good and godly people. What I was thinking to allow myself to become so alienated from you, I cannot imagine. I am embarrassed and sorrier than I can say for what I must have put you through. Yet you kept loving me, even in your occasional outbursts. You were only angry for what I was doing to myself. I see that now. You would have been wrong not to be angry for what I was doing. You saw how destructive it was to me.”

The father’s eyes filled. His breath grew shaky.

“When you sent me to Wales,” Percy continued, “I began looking at things differently. A new set of eyes opened inside me—maybe a little like the second sight Uncle Roderick would tell me about on our rides together,” he added, chuckling briefly. “I suppose being around Courtenay and Florilyn caused me to think about what kind of person I was becoming. In all honesty, Father, Courtenay just isn’t very nice. He wasn’t nice to me. He isn’t nice to his mother. Maybe I saw more of myself reflected in him than I wanted to admit. Florilyn was the same at first. But the most curious thing happened. It was almost as if she began to change along with me. I still don’t quite understand it exactly. But by the end of the summer, we had actually begun to form a friendship. We had an unfortunate row at the end. But that got patched up before I left. I actually think I miss her.”

He paused, and his lips parted in a thin, reflective smile. “I had my ups and downs,” he said. “At first I hated the country. I vowed not to let myself change. But in the end, the summer helped wake me up to the fact that I was making myself into a person of a certain sort, too, just like Courtenay, and that maybe I ought to give the matter more serious attention.”

Again he paused. Another smile came across his face. “And I met a precious little girl there who helped me notice things I hadn’t been in the habit of seeing before, a girl who loved animals and loved nature. She was tiny, almost fairylike, yet completely normal in every other way. Actually she wasn’t so very much younger than me—three or four years, something like that. But her size made her appear younger than she really was. And she possessed such an astonishing maturity to see God’s world in wondrous ways. I almost thought at times that she might be an angel.”

“She sounds like a remarkable girl,” said his father softly.

“She was. She cared about me, too. I know you and Mother care about me. But I suppose it sometimes takes somebody new to make you see what a wonderful thing that is and how grateful we should be when we are loved. She helped me see God’s creation in new ways. I know you have taught me many of the same things through the years. I am embarrassed now to realize that it took somebody else to open my eyes to them, but … well, I suppose that’s how it was.”

He paused and exhaled a deep sigh then resumed. “Anyway, one of the things I feel I need especially to say to you, Father,” Percy continued, “is that I respect and honor you for the man you are, for what you give to the people of the church, and for what you gave to me all those years that I was too blind to see until now. I am sorry. I ask you to forgive me. I don’t think I will be quite so blind ever again.”

Before Percy finished speaking, the poor vicar was on his feet, tears streaming down his face, covering the distance between them in two great strides. The next instant, father and son were in one another’s arms, Percy weeping freely and without shame.

“I’m so sorry, Father. Do you forgive me?”

“You have
always
been forgiven, Percy, my son,” whispered Edward. “The forgiveness has existed within my heart all along. Yet to complete the transaction, it was necessary for you to
ask
, that I might give it to you. So I
do
give it to you now. Of course you are forgiven for anything and everything. I love you.”

“Thank you, Father,” said Percy softly. “I love you, too.”

A moment more they stood then gradually fell away.

“There is one more thing I need to say,” said Percy. “Or, I should say, something I want to ask.”

“Anything,” replied the father, taking his chair again as he fumbled with his handkerchief at his eyes.

Percy took the seat his father had previously offered. He leaned forward then took a deep breath. “I have been thinking about my future,” he began. “I have squandered the years when I should have been working and studying. I realize it is a great deal to ask … but might you be willing to help me catch back up on my studies and make up for my poor marks and help me prepare for the university? When we were out on our last ride together, Uncle Roderick suggested I try to make a go of it. I think I’d like to try.”

“Of course, Percy. Nothing could delight me more.”

“I know I will be a year, maybe two behind others my age. As it stands now, I could not even get into the university—”

“I know people that might be able to make a difference in that regard.”

“I don’t want strings pulled for me, Father,” said Percy. “I want to work hard and improve my marks—”

“We shall find you a tutor.”

“Perhaps I might enroll in one of the grammar schools to prepare for the bursary competition. I do not want to attend university until I have earned that right and until I am ready.”

“What is it you think you want to study toward?” asked the vicar, having no idea what was coming.

“I haven’t really settled on anything definite yet,” replied Percy. “I don’t have to make any hasty decisions.”

He paused. An almost sheepish expression came over his face. “I know it may be hard for you to believe,” Percy added after a moment, “but actually … I have been thinking of possibly following
your
own footsteps.”

“Well, Percy,” replied Drummond, whose heart swelled with pride and his eyes filled with tears to hear his son speak so, “in answer to your question—yes, I shall do all that is in my power to help you … if it means tutoring you myself!”

Return Visit 1870

The University of the North

T
ime is a curious commodity for the young. No clock’s minute hand moves more slowly than one being watched by a bored and listless youth with time on his hands.

For the youth in love, however, or the young man filled with dreams and vision and energy and plans, time races by, and never a glance is sent toward the clock on the wall. The chimes of its hours seem to ring out every five minutes with the pressing reminder that there is not
enough
time. Caught up in the moment, hours, weeks, months race by in a blur.

Truly for the young at heart, a day is as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. Youth’s present stands as an eternal now of existence—there is no past, no future.

Percival Drummond’s suddenly altered outlook on life was all-consuming. Quickly the eventful months in Wales receded as a dream into his memory. He did not
forget
. He would never forget. It was a good dream, a wondrous dream. Scarce an hour, certainly not a day passed that he did not think about Wales and smile with the reminder of those individuals who had made it such a pivotal time of new focus for him.

But as a result of those brief months, he now had new goals and dreams. Those ambitions drove him in a way he had never been driven before. He had no leisure to dwell on the past. The future beckoned.

Within a year of his return home from Snowdonia, he had applied himself so diligently to his studies that, with a little of his father’s influence, but no more than Percy was comfortable with, he had so rapidly advanced ahead of his peers and beyond all expectations of his incredulous instructors, that shortly after his eighteenth birthday, having spent the summer of 1868 in an intensive preparatory program, he had been accepted to continue his studies at the University of Aberdeen the following year. His acceptance for the fall term, however, was predicated on yet another summer of hard work, in the great northern seaport itself, in a rigorous program for incoming Bajan, or first-year, students whose educational resumes were not quite as thorough as the university preferred to see.

Edward, Mary, and Percival Drummond traveled to Aberdeen together in May of that year to get Percy settled into his new lodgings for the summer and following term.

He still had not settled on a career. His initial enthusiasm for the pastorate had, if not waned, been tempered by the very practical question whether he would indeed be temperamentally suited, as he had said, to follow in his father’s footsteps. Nothing could have pleased Edward Drummond more. Yet he desired the best for Percy over whatever gratification he might feel by having a son in the ministry. He therefore encouraged Percy to explore a wide range of options. He put to him the very questions he had forced upon himself at the same crossroads of his own life—
Is this truly what God wants me to do?
and
Is this how I can best serve Him with my life?

Father and son continued to discuss the matter at length. Many thoughtful and personal letters passed between Aberdeen and Glasgow.

Percy’s studies in the great northern university began in earnest in the fall of 1869. They remained so demanding that he hardly had time to think of anything else. By the end of the term, he and his father were discussing both law and engineering as alternate potential career choices. Percy found both possibilities intriguing ones.

As he began to contemplate his prospects for the upcoming summer prior to his second term, the first in two years in which he would not have required schooling to look forward to, reminders of Snowdonia drifted into his consciousness.

The song of Wales crept out of hiding and began singing again to his soul.

Westbrooke Manor Again

I
t hardly seemed possible that three years had passed since Percy Drummond’s eventful visit to North Wales. Life-changing it had indeed been.

At nineteen, as he now looked back on his existence leading up to that fateful time, his heart overflowed with gratitude for his father’s courage to take such strong action on his behalf.

As he sat on the coach bouncing over the countryside toward Llanfryniog, how very different were the thoughts going through his brain from that day three years earlier when he and his father had jostled along this same road in chilly silence.

He remembered that first awkward encounter with his aunt Katherine and uncle Roderick. He thought he would be so bored in Wales. As it turned out, his memories of the coast of Gwynedd were among the most wonderful of his life.

He did not have as long this time as before—a mere three weeks. Then he would have to hurry north to begin a tutoring assignment in Aberdeen. But he determined to make the most of what time he had.

It would be interesting to see whether his cousins had changed. Reports had reached them that Courtenay had just completed his second year at Oxford and had not been home in all those two years. He had only preceded him to Wales by a couple of weeks. And Florilyn—he hardly knew what to expect from her. Would she be the old Florilyn or the new Florilyn, the tempestuous and self-centered girl of his first meeting three years ago or the girl who had begun to show signs of sensitivity and compassion?

Actually the invitation from his uncle a month ago, coinciding with Percy’s own thoughts of another visit south, came as something of a surprise. He should think having his son home would be sufficient diversion for the viscount. As he fell to reflecting on his uncle Roderick, however, Percy realized what an enigma the man was. It was not until he was home in Glasgow after his previous visit—of course by then he was beginning to see
many
things differently—that he began to realize that he had grown genuinely fond of his uncle during his sojourn in his home.

Perhaps he felt sorry for him. It was not difficult to see that he was more or less alienated from many of those around him—wife, son, daughter, tenants. The origin of the tension that existed within the man was difficult to identify. At one moment he could be so impulsive, the next indecisive. Nor did closer inspection fail to reveal some lingering mystery that seemed to hover over his uncle’s countenance like a far-off dream that nothing in his present circumstances appeared sufficient to account for.