The Little White Horse (6 page)

There had been no sound, but she was conscious that someone was listening intently to her playing. She got up and ran to the open window and looked out, but she could not see anyone in the rose-garden; only the birds. Then she ran to the door that led from the parlour to the great hall and opened it, and saw that Wrolf was sitting before the fire and that Sir Benjamin, dressed this morning in dark-green riding-clothes, was just entering the hall through a door at the far end. He gave a smile
that for geniality and warmth was like the sun rising on the first warm day of the year, but he made no reference to her playing, and she did not think he had heard it.

‘How did you sleep, my dear?’ he asked.

‘I slept well, Sir,’ said Maria, and curtsied to him, and then stood on tiptoe to kiss him. This was perhaps rather forward of her, for at that time the young did not kiss their elders unless commanded to do so. But she felt that she loved him so very much. And Sir Benjamin did not seem to mind. On the contrary, he seemed pleased, for, nearly-grown-up young lady of thirteen though she was, he picked her up and gave her a great bear-hug. Then he set her down and, feeling something wet and warm against her hand, she looked round and saw to her astonishment that Wrolf had risen to his feet and was standing beside her licking her hand, his great tail swishing slowly from side to side.

‘Look at that now!’ cried Sir Benjamin in triumph. ‘Wrolf knows it. You’re the true Merry weather steel, my dear, and Wrolf knows it.’

Shyly Maria laid her hand upon Wrolf’s great head, and with a beating heart dared to look straight into his strange burning yellow eyes. They looked back at her, taking possession of her. She was his now. Suddenly all fear of him vanished, and she flung her arms round his neck and buried her face in his tawny mane.

Then she looked up again at Sir Benjamin. ‘I’ve been looking at the lovely views from my windows, Sir,’ she said. ‘Which way does your room look?’

‘South and east, my dear,’ he said. ‘There is a second tower, and my room corresponds to the one Miss Heliotrope has. It was my mother’s room, when she was alive, but now I use it. The little room above, rather like yours but without the carvings and with a normal-sized door, was mine when I was a boy. But it is too small for me now and is not used any more.’ And then with a charred stick he traced the plan of the house on the ashes before the hearth.

The ground floor of the manor was composed only of storerooms and the room where Digweed slept. The great hall, with raftered ceiling reaching to the roof, the kitchen leading out of it on one side and the parlour on the other occupied the first floor. Miss Heliotrope’s bedroom was over the parlour and Sir Benjamin’s over the kitchen.

‘And now,’ said Sir Benjamin, ‘I’ll show you the lie of the land.’

He opened a drawer in the old writing-desk that stood against the wall and pulled out a rolled parchment, let down the flap of the desk and spread it out. ‘You can take this and examine it at your leisure whenever you like, my dear,’ he told her. ‘It shows you the whole of your Royal Highness’s Kingdom of Moonacre. But for now just take a quick glance at it and learn the lie of the land.’

It was an old map of the estate, and Maria bent over it with a beating heart; for though it showed her only a few square miles of England’s West Country, they were a few square miles that Sir Benjamin said were her very own — her kingdom. And at the right-hand edge of the map was a half-moon of blue that was the sea — Merryweather Bay . . . It seemed that Maria Merryweather, who had never seen the sea, actually owned a whole half-moon of blue water . . .

And then to the left was the church that she had seen from her west window, called the Church of Mary the Virgin, and the lovely hill behind it was called Paradise Hill. The names on the map, quite ordinary names though they were, sounded in her head like the notes of some beloved familiar piece of music. She looked up into Sir Benjamin’s face, smiling but speechless, and he nodded understandingly.

‘You’ve come home, my dear,’ he said. ‘But you can’t put what you feel into words. No Merryweather can. We don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves.’

‘Please, Sir,’ said Maria, ‘what is the meaning of those words that are carved over the fireplace in the parlour?’

“‘The brave soul and the pure spirit shall with a merry
and a loving heart inherit the kingdom together”,’ quoted Sir Benjamin. ‘That’s our family motto, my dear. It’s been our motto since the days of the first Sir Wrolf. It refers, I think, to the two sorts of Merry weathers, the sun and the moon Merryweathers, who are always merry when they love each other. It is also, perhaps, a device for linking together those four qualities that go to make up perfection — courage, purity, love, and joy.’ Sir Benjamin paused a moment, and then with intense relief suddenly bellowed, ‘Sausages!!!’

For a moment Maria thought that Sausage was another thing that one must have to attain perfection, but then a delicious smell told her that her cousin had descended suddenly from the spiritual plane to the material, where she guessed that he was really happier and more at home.

Almost at the same moment the door from the parlour opened to admit Miss Heliotrope in her rustling bombasine skirts, her black shawl and white mob-cap, happy and smiling after an excellent night, most unusually free from the nightmares of indigestion, and the door from the kitchen opened to admit the old coachman carrying an enormous dish of steaming sausages.

‘Good morning, Digweed,’ said Sir Benjamin.

‘Morning, Sir; morning, ladies,’ said Digweed.

Seeing him in daylight, without his hat, Maria immediately loved old Digweed. He had wide innocent blue eyes like a baby’s, a high wrinkled forehead and a completely bald head. His patched greatcoat had given place now to a mouse-coloured coat and waistcoat, with a big leather apron tied round his waist. The smile that he bestowed on Maria and Miss Heliotrope was sweet and loving, and he set the sausages on the table with a gesture that seemed imploring them to eat the lot.

But they didn’t have only sausages for breakfast. Digweed brought in as well a huge home-cured ham, brown boiled eggs, coffee, tea, new-baked bread, honey, cream with a thick yellow crust on the top of it, freshly
churned butter, and milk so new that it was still warm and frothing. So wide and delicious was the choice that Maria excelled herself in the way of appetite; and so did Wiggins, whose green dish had now been unpacked and was set before the hearth and filled with sausages by the generous hand of Sir Benjamin himself . . . Wrolf, it seemed, always had his meals in the kitchen, because he was partial to raw meat and was not a pretty feeder . . . Even Miss Heliotrope, encouraged by the freedom from nightmare, ventured on a brown boiled egg. As for Sir Benjamin, it was incredible what he ate, and the sight of the family appetite, combined with the sight of his girth, made Maria hesitate a moment over eating sausage as well as egg.

‘You need not fear, my dear,’ Sir Benjamin reassured her. ‘Only the sun Merryweathers run to fat. The moon Merryweathers can eat what they like and remain as slim and pale as a sickle moon.’

Maria smiled broadly and took the sausage.

‘Where did the habit come from, Maria?’ demanded Miss Heliotrope suddenly.

‘I found it in my room,’ said Maria.

‘I think it would have been better to put on your gown, as usual, for your morning’s instruction,’ said Miss Heliotrope reprovingly. ‘That little parlour will make an excellent schoolroom, and we will set to work as soon as we have finished breakfast.’

Maria looked up with eyes full of a desperate pleading, and found Sir Benjamin gazing at her habit in profound astonishment. He had not, it seemed, noticed it before. But he recovered himself and answered the pleading in her eyes.

‘You are too conscientious, Madam,’ he said to Miss Heliotrope. ‘You should allow yourself a morning of leisure, to settle into your new home and rest yourself after the fatigue of the journey. For this morning, Madam, I will take over the instruction of your pupil for you.’

He spoke with the utmost courtesy but with the
utmost firmness too, and Miss Heliotrope yielded at once. Indeed, she was glad to yield, for a quiet morning putting things to rights in her charming bedroom was exactly what she was longing for.

‘Now, Maria,’ said Sir Benjamin as soon as breakfast was over, ‘put on your hat, take a handful of sugar from the bowl, and come along . . . Wrolf . . . Wiggins . . . Come along.’ And then, bowing to Miss Heliotrope, ‘Goodbye, Madam, have no fear for your charge. She will be safe with me.’

‘I know that, Sir,’ said Miss Heliotrope, and actually watched her beloved Maria go out of the hall to she knew not what without a tremor, so great was her faith in Sir Benjamin.

‘Oh!’ cried Maria on a long note of ecstasy, as she stood with her guardian at the top of the flight of steps outside the front door and looked at what was waiting at the foot of them.

Digweed was waiting at the foot of them, holding the bridle of a fine strongly built chestnut cob and the leading-rein of a small, round, fat dapple-grey pony with very short legs, a long tail and mane, and a merry eye.

‘Atlas and Periwinkle,’ said Sir Benjamin, introducing them. ‘They are well named, I think. Atlas because he bears up heroically beneath my weight, and Periwinkle because the flower I named her after grows close to the earth and is called by country people Joy-of-the-ground. Periwinkle’s legs are uncommonly short, and she is old, and stout to boot, but she covers the ground with the greatest delight.’

But Maria had not stopped to listen to him. She had raced down the steps and was holding out her handful of sugar to Periwinkle. As she felt the soft warm muzzle in her hand, a thrill of joy went through her. With her free hand she patted the little pony’s dappled neck and twined
her fingers in the long grey mane that fell so untidily, yet so prettily, over the bright sparkling eyes. ‘Periwinkle! Joy-of-the-ground!’ she whispered, and then, the sugar being finished, she cocked her charming feathered hat on the side of her head, placed one hand in Digweed’s outstretched palm and her foot on the mounting-block that stood beside the steps, and swung herself into the saddle as though she had been doing it all her life . . . Digweed chuckled appreciatively, and Sir Benjamin, descending the steps, gave a great bellow of delighted laughter.

‘No need to teach a Merryweather how to ride, Digweed,’ he said. ‘I’ll not insult the little Mistress with the leading-rein. Take it away.’ And with a heave and a grunt he was up on the mounting-block and then upon Atlas’s broad patient back, and with Wrolf and Wiggins behind them they were trotting through the bright sunshine and the early spring loveliness of the formal garden, out through the door in the old battlemented walls, and away into the glory of the park.

Maria never forgot that morning. It was not quite true that she did not need to be taught. Sir Benjamin had to teach her how to adjust herself to the rhythm of Periwinkle’s trotting feet, how to manage reins and crop, how to hold on when Periwinkle broke into a joyous canter over the sweet turf. But she learned in two hours what most girls of her age would only have learned in two weeks, for she was without fear, and after each tumble she was up again, dizzy and bruised yet laughing, and back in the saddle almost before Sir Benjamin had time to draw rein.

He was hugely pleased with her. He noted that she had grit and skill, and that sense of oneness with her mount that makes the true horsewoman. Periwinkle was pleased too, co-operating in the riding lesson with all her power, and it was obvious that she had fallen as deeply in love with Maria as Maria with her.

‘Listen, my dear,’ said Sir Benjamin as they trotted homeward again, ‘you may go where you like in the
valley, in the company of Wrolf or Periwinkle. You must not ramble about the countryside alone, but with them you may go where you will.’

Maria looked up at her guardian with eyes wide with amazement and delight. At this date it was not considered proper for young ladies to go anywhere without a servant in attendance, a custom which had always irked the independent Maria.

‘You mean,’ she whispered, scarcely believing it, ‘that I may go to the village, to Merryweather Bay, and Paradise Hill, without asking your permission first?’

‘Not to Merryweather Bay,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘There is just that one exception. I would rather you did not go to Merryweather Bay, and I’ll tell you why. The fishermen down there are a very rough lot. They are not on good terms with the village people, or with us at the manor. It’s a great nuisance, because they refuse to sell us their fish, and a little fresh fish would be welcome now and then. What fish we do get is bought in the market town beyond the hills, and is never really fresh. So avoid Merryweather Bay, my dear, but go anywhere else you like provided Wrolf or Periwinkle, or both, are with you.’

‘I don’t know what Miss Heliotrope will say about me going out with only the animals,’ said Maria. ‘In London I wasn’t allowed to walk even to the other end of the street unattended.’

‘I will talk to her,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘A Princess called to rule a kingdom must know it through and through, if she is to reign worthily. And how can she know it, if she is not given the freedom of it?’

Maria gazed at him. This was the second time that he had spoken of Moonacre as hers. Did he mean that when he died she would be his heiress? But the thought of Sir Benjamin dying was so awful that she put the thought away from her and did not pursue it further. Nor did Sir Benjamin, for they were back in the garden again and riding round to the stables on the east side of the house.

The Moonacre stable-yard was entered by a wide
archway in the thick stone wall and was an enchanted place. Just inside the archway, as one entered it, stood a tall dovecot, and the cooing of the doves and the loveliness of their plumage made up a large part of the enchantment. And then it was cobbled with rounded softly coloured stones that looked like opals, with tufts of bright-green moss growing between them, and in the centre of it was a huge well with a stone wall all round it.