The Little White Horse Read online

  Loveday rose from her knees and came towards Maria, with something white and shimmering in her arms. She put it over her head and pulled it down around her, and Maria saw that it was an exquisite dress of moony white satin. It was the loveliest dress she had ever seen, and she gasped with delight as Loveday hooked it up . . . It was a perfect fit.

  ‘It is a wedding dress,’ said Loveday. ‘But I never wore it.’

  ‘But why not?’ asked the puzzled Maria. ‘Fancy having a lovely dress like this, and then not wearing it at your wedding after all.’

  ‘The man I was going to marry when I made this dress was not the man I did marry,’ explained Loveday. ‘I was betrothed to a rich gentleman once, and I made this dress for my wedding with him. Then we quarrelled, and I did not marry him, after all. I married a poor gentleman in a dress of sprigged muslin that was more suited to my bridegroom’s lot in life . . . You look lovely, my darling. Look at yourself in the glass.’

  Maria went towards the old mirror of polished silver, not frightened this time because Loveday was standing just behind her, looking over her shoulder and laughing, and she saw their two happy faces side by side. That moony radiance, which was the gift of the glass to the faces it mirrored, gave them a sisterly likeness that rejoiced their hearts.

  ‘Don’t we look alike?’ cried Maria. ‘I’m plain and you are beautiful, but yet in this glass we look alike.’

  ‘We are alike,’ said Loveday. ‘But don’t make my mistakes, Maria, whatever you do.’

  ‘What were your mistakes?’ asked Maria.

  ‘Too many to tell you,’ said Loveday, ‘but they all grew out of being aggravating and losing my temper. Never be aggravating, Maria, and never get in a rage.’

  ‘I’ll do my best not to,’ promised Maria. ‘And when I’m married, may I wear this dress?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Loveday. ‘It will need no alteration. It’s a perfect fit.’

  They went downstairs and found that Robin had already changed into dry clothes and set the table for tea with bread and butter, honey and cream, and golden-brown parkin. The kettle was singing on the hob, the white kitten was purring loudly, and the strange cave-room looked glowing and cosy, lit by the leaping flames of the log fire. When she had put the children’s wet things to dry, Loveday made the tea in a big brown pot like a beehive, and they sat down and fell hungrily upon the lovely food. Robin, sitting opposite Maria at the oak table spread with its snowy cloth, gazed at her in astounded appreciation of her appearance, but was at first too much occupied in eating to say anything about it. However, when he had devoured half a loaf and a lot of parkin he at last gave tongue.

  ‘That’s a pretty dress,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘I’ve not seen it before. It looks like a wedding dress.’

  ‘It is a wedding dress,’ said Maria thickly, for she too was ravenous and was devouring bread and honey at the rate of two bites a slice. ‘It’s my wedding dress. I’m trying it on to see if it fits.’

  ‘Are you going to be married?’ asked Robin sharply, his munching jaws suddenly still.

  ‘Of course,’ said Maria, reaching for the cream. ‘You didn’t expect me to be an old maid, did you?’

  ‘Are you being married today?’ demanded Robin.

  But this time Maria’s mouth was so full that she couldn’t answer, and Loveday, who hadn’t had her hunger sharpened by fresh air, danger, and exercise, and was nibbling very daintily at a very thin slice of bread and butter, answered for her.

  ‘Of course she isn’t being married today, Robin. She isn’t old enough to be married yet. But when she is married she will wear that dress.’

  ‘When you do marry, who will you marry?’ Robin asked Maria.

  Maria swallowed the last of her bread and cream and honey, put her head on one side and stirred her tea thoughtfully. ‘I have not quite decided yet,’ she said demurely, ‘but I think I shall marry a boy I knew in London.’

  ‘What?’ yelled Robin. ‘Marry some mincing nincompoop of a Londoner with silk stockings and pomade in his hair and a face like a Cheshire cheese?’

  The parkin stuck in his gullet and he choked so violently that Loveday had to pat him on the back and pour him out a fresh cup of tea. When he spoke again his face was absolutely scarlet, not only with the choke but with rage and jealousy and exasperation.

  ‘You dare do such a thing!’ he exploded. ‘You — Maria — you — if you marry a London man I’ll wring his neck!’

  ‘Robin! Robin!’ expostulated his mother in horror. ‘I’ve never seen you in a temper like this before. I did not know you had got a temper.’

  ‘Well, you know now,’ said Robin furiously. ‘And if she marries that London fellow, I’ll not only wring his neck, I’ll wring everybody’s necks, and I’ll go right away out of the valley, over the hills to the town where my father came from, and I won’t ever come back here again. So there!’

  Maria said nothing at all in response to this outburst. She just continued to drink her tea and look more demure than ever. And the more demure she looked the angrier Robin became. His eyes flashed fire, and his chestnut curls seemed standing straight up all over his head with fury. Maria was quite sure that if she had been standing behind him she would have seen the twist of hair in the nape of his neck twitching backwards and forwards like a cat’s tail. She drank her tea with maddening deliberation and spoke at last.

  ‘Why don’t you want me to marry that London boy?’ she asked.

  Robin brought his fist down on the table with a crash that set all the china leaping. ‘Because you are going to marry me,’ he shouted. ‘Do you hear, Maria? You are going to marry me.’

  ‘Robin,’ said his mother, ‘that’s not at all the way to propose. You should go down on one knee and do it in a very gentle voice.’

  ‘How can I go down on one knee when I’m in the middle of my tea?’ demanded Robin. ‘And how can I do it in a gentle voice when I feel as though I had a roaring lion inside me? If I didn’t roar, I should burst.’

  ‘You can stop roaring, Robin,’ said Maria. ‘You can stop, because for the sake of peace and quiet I have suddenly made up my mind to marry you.’

  Robin’s curls flopped down on his head again and the crimson tide receded from his forehead. ‘That’s all right then,’ he said with a great sigh of relief. ‘That’s settled. I’ll have some more parkin, please, Mother.’

  After that they ate and drank and laughed, and talked of other things, while the fire leaped up, the white kitten purred, the kettle hummed louder and louder, and happiness seemed all about them like a radiance and a singing that they could almost see and hear. But something seemed still troubling Robin very slightly, and at last he burst out: ‘Maria, who is this London boy you were thinking of marrying?’

  ‘I have never had the slightest intention of marrying any London boy,’ said Maria.

  ‘But you said —’

  ‘I said, a boy I knew in London,’ said Maria. ‘That boy was you.’

  The last remnant of Robin’s jealousy and rage evaporated. He threw back his head and laughed and laughed, roaring not this time with anger but with mirth, and something about that genial roaring reminded Maria abruptly and surprisingly of Sir Benjamin.

  ‘Now listen, children,’ said Loveday, getting up from the table and standing and looking down on them with sudden deep seriousness, ‘you are laughing now; but a little while ago Robin was angry and Maria was being as aggravating as she knew how to be. You might have quarrelled very badly. And you must never quarrel. If you do, you will wreck not only your own happiness but the happiness of the whole valley.’

  Then she gathered the tea-things together, stacked them in a corner of the room beside her washing-up bowl, folded up the tablecloth and put it away, and went up the stairs to her own room. She was not crying, but Maria had the feeling that had she not been so proud a woman, she would have been.

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Maria to herself, ‘if she wasn’t loving that fine gentlema
n she didn’t marry all the time she was quarrelling with him, but she was too proud to make it up. Poor Loveday!’

  After that she was silent for a moment, watching Robin feeding the kitten and remembering how all the Moon Princesses quarrelled with the men they loved and had to go away from Moonacre Manor, remembering that she did not want to go away herself, remembering that she and Robin had very nearly had a bad row a moment ago, remembering that she had said to Old Parson that perhaps if Paradise Hill was given back to God these quarrels would not happen any more.

  ‘Robin,’ she said, ‘before we drive out the wickedness of the Men from the Dark Woods, we’ve got to give Paradise Hill back to God. Sir Wrolf stole it, you know. We must give it back.’

  Robin looked round from the saucer of milk he was setting before the fire. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But how?’

  Maria, still sitting at the table, cupped her determined chin in her hands and considered. How indeed? She would have liked to ask the advice of the monks from whom Sir Wrolf had originally stolen it, only they had been dead for centuries. The nearest thing to a monk that she knew of in these parts was Old Parson. Would he know what to do? ‘I’ll ask Old Parson,’ she said to Robin.

  ‘All right,’ said Robin. ‘Only whatever Old Parson tells us to do we’d better do it at once, so that we can make a start on those wicked men. There’s no time to waste, you know. They’re getting worse and worse. Animals are being caught in traps every day, and more and more chickens and geese and ducks and sheep and cows are getting stolen. Six cows disappeared last week.’

  Maria got up. ‘I’ll go to Old Parson at once,’ she said. ‘On my way home.’

  Robin got up, too, and faced her across the table. His eyes were sparkling, and she knew that he, too, was exulting in the hugeness of the adventure that lay before them.

  ‘Robin,’ she said, ‘how did you know that you and I together had to drive out the wickedness of the Men from the Dark Woods? The very first day I saw you here, you said we’d have to do it. How did you know?’

  ‘It was because of Serena,’ said Robin. ‘No one before has ever been able to save anything from those men, but you and I saved Serena. I knew then that we could save the whole valley. I knew it more than ever, when we saved the sheep.’

  ‘There’s another thing I don’t understand,’ said Maria. ‘How did you manage to come and play with me in the Square garden in London?’

  ‘I went to you when I was asleep,’ said Robin. ‘Sometimes I’d be keeping the sheep on Paradise Hill or weeding the manor-house garden, and suddenly I’d feel sleepy, and I’d curl round on the grass or among the flowers and doze off; and then I’d find myself in London. Or I’d suddenly feel sleepy while I was scrubbing the Merryweather Chantry, and I’d lie down on top of Sir Wrolf, with my head on the dog, and doze off. Or I’d feel sleepy while I was here with Mother and I’d sit down on the floor and fall asleep with my head on her lap. I asked Mother about it once and she said that we are really all of us two people, a body person and a spirit person, and when the body person is asleep the spirit person, who lives inside it like a letter inside an envelope, can come out and go on journeys.’

  ‘I see,’ said Maria. Then she asked another question. ‘Robin, Loveday told me that Sir Benjamin does not know she lives here. But if you are his shepherd boy and garden boy, he must know that you live here?’

  ‘Yes, of course he does,’ said Robin. ‘But he thinks I am the adopted child of old Elspeth who used to live in this house. Mother told the villagers to tell him that because she doesn’t want him to know that old Elspeth is dead and that she lives here now. She keeps hidden when he’s anywhere around.’

  ‘But why, Robin?’ demanded Maria, aflame with curiosity. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Robin indifferently, pouring out a fresh saucer of milk for the kitten.

  ‘Robin, haven’t you any curiosity?’ Maria demanded almost passionately. ‘Haven’t you asked Loveday?’

  ‘No,’ said Robin. ‘Why should I? It isn’t any business of mine. How I could manage to visit you in London was my business, and so I asked Mother about it. But it was nothing to do with me about her not wanting Sir Benjamin to know she lives here.’

  Maria heaved a great impatient sigh. Truly the non-curiosity of men was beyond her comprehension. As for herself, she felt that if she did not get to the bottom of what was between Loveday and Sir Benjamin before she slept tonight, her curiosity would most certainly be the death of her. But it was no use asking any more questions of Robin.

  ‘I’m going upstairs to take this dress off, Robin,’ she said, gathering up her own clothes from before the fire. ‘And then I’ll go home by way of the Parsonage and ask Old Parson about Paradise Hill.’

  ‘All right,’ said Robin cheerfully. And then, as she went up the steps to Loveday’s room, he called after her, ‘Next time you put that dress on it will be to marry me.’

  ‘So it will, Robin,’ said Maria. And she laughed. It would be great fun to marry Robin.

  She had expected to find Loveday upstairs, but there was no sign of her, and as she took off the lovely wedding dress and laid it away again in the oak chest she had the feeling that Loveday had gone up through Robin’s room and climbed the steps inside the hill, and gone out through Paradise Door to Paradise Hill, and was wandering there where once the Moon Princess had wandered, trying to find comfort because she had quarrelled with the man she loved.

  2

  When she had changed and gone downstairs again Robin let her out through the back door, and she ran all the way through the gathering dusk to the Parsonage and knocked at the old front door. Old Parson let her in at once with a welcoming smile and shut the door behind her. It was warm and cosy and pretty in his little room, for he had drawn his curtains and lighted his candles and kindled a bright fire on the hearth, and his pink geraniums were glowing gloriously. Sitting beside him on the settle, warming her toes at his fire, for it had turned quite chilly after the storm, she told him that she wanted to give Paradise Hill back to God but she did not know how.

  ‘I’ll show you how,’ said Old Parson. ‘Come to the church very early tomorrow morning, at the hour when the children are playing there, and you and I and the children will all go up to Paradise Hill together and give it back to God. But there’s another thing that you must do, Maria, and you must do it tonight.’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Maria.

  ‘Sir Benjamin makes a lot of money out of selling the wool that grows on the backs of those sheep of his that he keeps on Paradise Hill, but if the hill is to be given back to God then after tomorrow morning the wool is God’s wool, not Sir Benjamin’s. You must explain that to him.’

  Maria looked at him a little doubtfully. ‘Couldn’t you explain it?’ she asked. ‘You could walk home with me now.’

  ‘I could not,’ said Old Parson firmly. ‘I shall be much occupied for the rest of the evening. Now you’d better go home, Maria, for it’s getting dark and you don’t want to be out by yourself in the park in the dark.’

  Maria got up at once. She certainly did not. Alone in the dark was a state of affairs she did not relish with the Men from the Dark Woods about. When Old Parson had shut his front door behind her and she saw how much darker it had grown while she had been with him, she felt downright frightened. He might have come with her, she thought. He might have come with her to look after her . . . And what was that great shadow there, outside the gate? Was it one of Them? . . .

  She gave a little stifled cry of fear, which changed midway to a cry of joy, as the supposed Man lifted a tail and waved it in the air, and she saw that the shadowy shape was Wrolf. She went down the garden path, patted his great head, and marvelled to think that once she had been afraid of him. And then together they went down the village street, and through the broken gate into the park.

  That walk through the park with Wrolf was a thing that Maria never forgot. It was almost dark now, and had she been alone she would have been afrai
d, but with Wrolf pacing along beside her, the embodiment of courage and strength, she felt as safe as houses. She walked slowly, the fingers of one hand twisted in his great furry ruff, and smelt the sweet scents of wet earth and flowers and moss, and lifted her head to watch for the first pricking forth of the stars in the sky above the treetops.

  It was so still after the storm that she could hear a dog barking miles away and the rustle of birds going to bed. Now and then she looked up the shadowy glades on each side of her, but not with any sense of expectation, only to think how beautiful they were. She did not really expect to see the little white horse now, because she had looked for him so often and had never seen him again. Sometimes she wondered if she ever had seen him, or if what she had seen on the first night had been only a stray moonbeam.

  No, it wasn’t because of anything that she saw that that walk home was so lovely. It was because of Wrolf. Since this afternoon there seemed a new and very strong bond between them. She thought he was pleased because of what she and Robin had decided to try to do. He wanted her to succeed and not to fail like the other Moon Maidens. He did not want her to have to leave Moonacre Manor. Perhaps he did not want to have to leave it himself? For it seemed that the tawny dog always had to go back to the pine-wood when the Moon Maiden quarrelled with her lover. It was as though he were a sort of picture of the fine qualities of Moonacre men — strong and brave, loving, warm and ruddy — so that when the Moon Maiden parted with her man she had to part with the tawny dog too.

  And the little white horse, Maria thought suddenly, had all the Moon Maiden qualities, the white beauty, the shining purity, the still pride. Only the tawny dog and the little white horse had a perfection to which individual sun and moon Merryweathers would never attain . . . They were ideals . . . It was because of these thoughts that went through her head, as well as because Wrolf was so pleased with her, that Maria so enjoyed that walk home.