The Little White Horse Read online

  ‘For the Moon Princess?’ whispered Maria.

  Old Parson smiled. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Possibly Sir Benjamin looks upon the old prophecy as just a fairy story.’

  ‘Do you believe in it?’ asked Maria.

  ‘In every fairy-tale there is a kernel of truth,’ said Old Parson. ‘I think it likely that only a Moon Princess can deal with the wickedness of the Men from the Dark Woods, because it is a fact that only the moon can banish the blackness of night. And I think it probable that only when she humbles herself to love a poor man will she do it, because it is a fact that nothing worthwhile in this world is achieved without love and humility. And as for the fact that though they consort so well together, the union of sun and moon Merryweathers has so far always ended in a quarrel — well — Sir Wrolf was a sinner, and it is a fact that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children — until the children undo what their fathers did.’

  ‘Do you think that Sir Wrolf killed Black William?’ asked Maria.

  ‘I do not,’ said Old Parson decidedly. ‘That is a crime to which he would not have stooped. The Merryweathers have never been murderers.’

  ‘Then what do you think happened to Black William?’ asked Maria.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Old Parson. ‘Perhaps he suddenly became fatigued with everything and took himself off to some hermitage, to brood over his wrongs in private. Wicked men do suffer from fatigue a good deal, for wickedness is a very fatiguing thing.’

  ‘And then, perhaps,’ said Maria, ‘he just got into a boat and sailed away into the sunset and was never seen again. Oh, I’m glad Sir Wrolf was not a murderer!’

  ‘But though not a murderer, Sir Wrolf was covetous, a thief, and a deceiver, and so a great sinner,’ said Old Parson sternly. ‘You have no cause to congratulate yourself upon your ancestry.’

  ‘I think that Paradise Hill ought to be given back to God again,’ said Maria. ‘The Merryweathers have no right to it. Things will keep on going wrong between the sun and moon Merryweathers, until they aren’t thieves any more.’

  ‘Maria,’ said Old Parson approvingly, ‘you are a credit to your hitherto not very creditable family.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Maria, ‘if Wrolf is a descendant of the first Sir Wrolf’s tawny dog, the one which went back to the pine-woods after he died?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Old Parson. ‘It is said that a year or so before it is time for another Moon Princess to come to Moonacre a tawny dog comes out of the pine-woods on Christmas Eve and takes up his residence at the manor. And then, when the Moon Princess comes, he has her in his special protection.’

  Maria’s eyes opened wide. ‘Sir Benjamin told me,’ she said, ‘that Wrolf came out of the pine-woods a year ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Old Parson.

  Maria’s eyes opened wider still. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘Wrolf isn’t a descendant of the first dog but the first dog himself.’

  ‘Dogs don’t usually live for hundreds of years,’ said Old Parson.

  ‘But then Wrolf isn’t a usual sort of dog, is he?’ said Maria.

  ‘No,’ Old Parson agreed, ‘he certainly is not.’

  3

  They had finished breakfast now, and, opening a cupboard beside the fireplace, Old Parson took out his fiddle and seated himself on the settle to fit a new string into it. Maria did not feel like a stranger in this room, she felt utterly at home in it, and as though she were at home she crossed to the bookshelves and began looking at the books.

  ‘Borrow what you like,’ said Old Parson. ‘My books, like myself, are always at the service of my friends.’

  ‘But they are nearly all in foreign languages,’ said Maria.

  ‘If you want an English book,’ said Old Parson, ‘there is a book of English verse at the far end of the top shelf. . . Though to my mind the French language is the loveliest and the best.’

  His slightly foreign intonation seemed accentuated as he spoke, and Maria turned round and looked at him. ‘Please, Sir,’ she asked shyly, ‘are you — French?’

  ‘I am,’ said Old Parson, and tucking his fiddle under his chin he began to play, very softly, the air Maria had been playing at the harpsichord before she had joined him in the rose-garden.

  ‘Who taught it to you?’ he asked her.

  ‘No one,’ said Maria. ‘It came out of the harpsichord the very first time I opened it.’

  ‘I guessed as much,’ said Old Parson, half to himself. ‘It must have been the last one she played before she shut the harpsichord. Yes, I remember that she played it that night. It was her last night at the manor. That was twenty years ago.’

  And then he let the soft air he had been playing merge into a merry country dance, so that Maria had no chance to ask any questions, though quite a hundred of them were burning on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed them down and took from the shelf the book that Old Parson had pointed out. It had a faded heliotrope cover, and was small enough to slip quite easily into her hanging pocket. But before she put it there she peeped inside, and saw written on the flyleaf a name that was familiar to her, written in a handwriting that was also familiar to her.

  The name was Louis de Fontenelle and the handwriting was that of her governess Miss Heliotrope . . . The room turned upside-down with Maria . . . Then it righted itself again, and she stood there silently, her hand holding the book inside her pocket, wondering what she should do. Nothing as yet, she thought. Just wait.

  Old Parson was standing up now, and the dance had passed into a great soaring piece of music like a flock of white birds in flight. She did not think he had noticed how the room had turned upside-down with her; indeed, he seemed now to have forgotten all about her. He had been caught away on the wings of his music to the place where the white birds were flying. She dropped him an unnoticed curtsy, put on her bonnet and cloak, lifted the latch of the door, and went quickly out into the small, sweet, tangled garden.

  4

  But at the wooden gate she paused and waited, and she did not have to wait long, for in a moment or two Loveday Minette came round the corner of the Parsonage, wearing a grey shawl flung round her shoulders, but with her beautiful head bare.

  ‘I knew you would wait for me,’ she said in her deep sweet voice. ‘Shall we walk to my home together? It is not very much out of your way.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maria humbly, and when Loveday held out her hand to her she took it shyly, as she would have taken the hand of a queen. For though Loveday’s hands were toilworn and she worked for Old Parson as though she were a servant, yet she bore herself with the air of a very great lady indeed, and as such Maria accepted her.

  ‘My name, too, is Maria,’ she said as they walked through the churchyard together, ‘but when I was a little girl they called me Minette because I was so small, and the name has stuck because I am still so small.’

  ‘My father’s mother was called Loveday,’ said Maria.

  ‘Loveday and Maria are both Merryweather names,’ said Loveday Minette. ‘Merryweather women are called Maria, or Mary, because the church is dedicated to Saint Mary. And Loveday — well — moon people love the day and the bright sun.’

  They walked hand in hand together along the village street, turned in through the broken gate into the park, and then turned to their right along a narrow footpath.

  Upon their left the trees grew thickly as in a wood, but upon their right was a green hillside with grey granite rocks breaking through the turf and rising up beside them like a wall.

  ‘This is one of the lower spurs of Paradise Hill,’ said Loveday as they walked along. ‘But it is too steep to climb up it just here. The best way is to take the lane leading up from the village.’ Then she stopped, laying her hand on a great grey rock that jutted out from the steep hillside beside her. ‘Will you come in for a little while?’ she asked. ‘I would like to show you my home.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maria, but she looked about her in bewilderment, for she saw no sign of a ho
use.

  ‘This way,’ said Loveday, and walked round the rock and disappeared.

  More astonished than ever, Maria too walked round the rock, and there behind it, almost hidden by a rowan-tree that drooped over it from the hillside above, was a door in the hill. Loveday stood just inside it, holding it hospitably open and smiling as though this were a perfectly ordinary door to a perfectly ordinary house.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘This is the back door. I’m afraid it’s a bit dark in the passage. Give me your hand and I’ll shut the door.’

  When the door was shut it was pitch dark, but with her hand held firmly in Loveday’s warm strong clasp Maria felt no fear. They walked together down a narrow tunnel, and then Loveday lifted a latch and opened a door, and a lovely green light, the sort of light that Maria imagined lit the world beneath the sea, flowed over them.

  ‘This is my living-room,’ said Loveday.

  It was a large cave, but it had windows just like an ordinary room. There were two in the east wall and one in the west wall, diamond-paned windows set deeply in the rock. Outside, they were shrouded by green curtains of ferns and creepers, so that Maria guessed no passer-by could ever have known that the windows were there. The door by which they had entered was in the north wall, and beside it a stone staircase, so steep and narrow that it was more like a ladder than a staircase, was built against the wall and led to an upper room. In the south wall there was another door, with a bell hanging beside it. Hanging on a peg beside the bell was a long black hooded cloak, and upon the other side of the door was a fireplace with a log fire burning merrily upon the hearth, with a white kitten asleep before it. The room was furnished with a settle and table and chairs, made of oak; but in addition there was a dresser against the south wall with pretty flowered china upon it and bright copper pots and pans. Pale-pink chintz patterned with roses of a deeper pink hung in the windows, and there were colourful rag rugs on the stone floor. There were pots of salmon-pink geraniums on the window-sills and on the table, and bunches of herbs hung from the roof. In its simplicity and fresh cleanliness the room was so like Old Parson’s, though it was three times the size of his, that Maria guessed Loveday had arranged them both. She admired Loveday’s taste in arrangement, but not her passion for pink. There was too much pink in this room, she considered. She preferred the colour scheme in the manor-house parlour.

  ‘But what fun to live in a cave!’ she cried, looking about her delightedly.

  ‘There’s something about pink that makes even a cave look homelike,’ said Loveday. ‘I love pink. Now come upstairs, my dear, and see where we sleep.’

  ‘We?’ wondered Maria, as she followed her beautiful hostess up the narrow staircase. Had Loveday got a husband? There were none of the usual signs of a husband, no muddy boots about or tobacco ash upon the floor. He must be a very tidy husband.

  The stone staircase brought them out into Loveday’s beautiful bedroom. Here again there were fern-shaded windows to west and east, with curtains patterned this time with pink convolvulus. Loveday’s four-poster stood against the south wall. It had curtains of the same convolvulus chintz, and a lovely patchwork quilt, with pink predominating in the colour scheme. The furniture here looked very old. Beside the bed there was a press for clothes and an oak chest black with age, with a mirror hanging over it. This mirror was not made of glass but of burnished silver, and forming a panel across the top of it was the figure of a little horse in full gallop.

  ‘Hundreds of years ago, when that mirror was made, there was no such thing as glass,’ said Loveday, seeing Maria’s astonished eyes resting upon the mirror. ‘They had to use burnished metal instead.’ She laughed softly. ‘But it gives back a softened and becoming reflection. Look at yourself in my mirror and you’ll find you are prettier than you thought you were.’

  With a beating heart Maria went to the mirror and looked, and it was indeed a very lovely face that looked back at her. Her freckles seemed to have disappeared, and her hair, instead of having a reddish tinge, was pure silvery gold. And behind her head there shone a soft moony radiance.

  ‘But it’s not me in the mirror,’ she whispered to Loveday.

  ‘Yes it is,’ said Loveday softly, taking her hand. ‘Do not be afraid.’ Then she pulled Maria away from the mirror. ‘Look! That little staircase leads to his room.’

  Beside the door another ladder-like staircase led up against the wall, but so much steeper and narrower than the other one that Maria thought one would have to be very small and agile to get up it. Loveday must have, surely, a fairy sort of husband, so small and tidy and surefooted as he evidently was. She longed to see what his room was like, but just as Loveday was moving towards the staircase a bell rang.

  ‘That’s Digweed back,’ said Loveday, and sped down the stairs to the living-room again; and Maria was obliged to follow her, for well-brought-up people do not in another person’s house enter their rooms without permission. Also she was puzzled to know what the bell had to do with Digweed being back.

  When she reached the living-room again the bell that hung beside the door in the south wall was still vibrating, and Loveday had put on her long black hooded cloak and was unlatching the door. ‘Come, child,’ she said to Maria. ‘Digweed will be able to give you a lift back to the manor, and that will save your legs, for by this time they are surely weary.’

  Maria followed her out into a dark damp tunnel, lit only by the light that came from the living-room. They turned to the right, and there before them was a great oak door, securely barred by the slender trunk of a tree laid across it on supports like a bolt.

  Now Maria knew where she was; this was the same tunnel through which they had driven on the evening of their arrival. And that shadowy figure that she had seen there had been Loveday in her black cloak, opening the door to them, as she was doing now, pulling the hood of her cloak forward with one hand, so that her face was hidden before she lifted the tree-trunk away from the door. She must be very strong, thought Maria, even though she is so tiny; as strong as a fairy woman.

  The great door swung open, and Digweed in the gig, with Darby between the shafts, drove through.

  ‘I’m alone, Ma’am,’ he called to Loveday, and she let the hood fall back from her face again.

  ‘Stop and pick up our little lady,’ she said, and he stopped and waited, smiling broadly at Maria while Loveday shut and barred the great door again. When she had done it she helped Maria climb up into the gig beside Digweed. Then she stood beside it, looking earnestly up at Maria, the green light from the open doorway behind her making her beautiful face look strangely unearthly.

  ‘Maria,’ she said, ‘do not tell Sir Benjamin that you have seen me. Because, you see, he does not know that I live here. Old Parson knows, the whole village knows, Digweed knows that I am Porteress of the Moonacre Gate, but Sir Benjamin does not know.’

  Maria was by this time getting used to living in a perpetual state of astonishment and used to curbing her curiosity, so that at this startling piece of information she just nodded, and one question only escaped her.

  ‘But if he doesn’t know you are Porteress, who does he think is?’ she demanded.

  ‘There was an old woman who used to be Porteress,’ said Loveday. ‘She lived at the manor-house once, but she asked so many questions that Marmaduke Scarlet got annoyed and was rude to her, and so she wouldn’t live there any longer, and Sir Benjamin made her Porteress so that she should have a comfortable home. But she quarrelled with him too, for I am afraid she was rather a bad-tempered old woman as well as a curious one; and she would not speak to him or let him set foot in the gatehouse. Then she died and I took her place. But Sir Benjamin does not know that she has died and does not know that I have taken her place. This is her cloak that I wear, and she was a little woman, so that if Sir Benjamin catches sight of me as he drives through he only thinks that he sees old Elspeth. I know that I can trust you, Maria. I know that you will keep my secret, as all the village people do.’
/>   ‘You can trust me,’ said Maria, and she bent down from the gig and she and Loveday kissed each other, and then she and Digweed drove on through the tunnel and out into the warm still loveliness of the park.

  5

  Maria had not driven this way since the night of her arrival, and she looked about her eagerly. It looked very different in daylight; but the glades that wound away between the trees were just as mysterious, and it would not have surprised her if she had seen the little white horse galloping up one of them. But she didn’t, and presently she left off looking and attended to Digweed’s conversation, for he had enjoyed himself at the market-town and wanted to tell her all about it. He had bought a new spade and a new scythe, ten new mousetraps, a bottle of cough mixture for his own use, a pig, a canary in a cage, an enormous meatbone, a bag of biscuits, a bunch of radishes, a paper bag full of bull’s-eyes and another full of bright pink boiled sweets, a cod’s head, and a large packet of tobacco. It was rather a noisy journey, for the pig was squeaking, the canary was singing at the top of its voice, the mousetraps leaped and rattled at every bump in the road, and the cod’s head had the sort of smell that one could almost hear. But Maria enjoyed the drive, in spite of the cod’s head, for Digweed was so kind and companionable and she loved him very much.

  Sir Benjamin and Miss Heliotrope were walking together in the formal garden, and Digweed stopped the gig, so that Maria could get down and join them. When she was down he handed her the pink boiled sweets.

  ‘For you, little Mistress,’ he said very shyly.

  And then, getting purple in the face, he handed the bull’s-eyes to Miss Heliotrope. ‘For you, Ma’am,’ he said. ‘I knows you be partial to peppermint.’