The Little White Horse Read online

  The coat and breeches were shiny at the seams, and so much too tight for him that when he seated himself at the breakfast table it had to be very slowly and with ominous creakings, and the shoes were very rubbed at the toes. But there was not a speck of dust upon the velvet, and the polish upon the shoes and buckles was so bright as to be dazzling. As for Sir Benjamin’s face, it had been shaved and then scrubbed to such an extent that it was absolutely scarlet, with a shine upon it that almost equalled that upon his shoes.

  ‘Cleanliness,’ chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece’s delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him,’ ‘comes next to godliness, eh, Maria? That’s always been the opinion of Merry weathers, anyway.’

  Digweed drove them to church in the carriage, open today to the sweet air. It had evidently been given a Sunday scrub-up, for the floor was still wet when Miss Heliotrope, Sir Benjamin and Maria climbed into it and seated themselves in a solemn row upon the back seat, Miss Heliotrope in the middle and Sir Benjamin and Maria protectingly upon either side of her.

  They looked perhaps a trifle odd sitting there in a row, a little pressed for space because of Miss Heliotrope’s hoop and Sir Benjamin’s bulk. Miss Heliotrope also of course had an umbrella and her reticule, and they all had large black prayer-books.

  But laden though they were with one thing and another in the way of impedimenta, they were entirely eclipsed by Digweed, who had upon the box beside him the very largest musical instrument Maria had ever seen in her life . . . It was twice the size of Digweed.

  ‘A double bass,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘He plays it in church. He’s the chief man in the choir, you know. He’s a good musician, Digweed. Grand.’

  Digweed smiled, clucked to Darby and Joan, and they were off, watched from the top of the steps by Wrolf and Wiggins standing side by side in a very stately manner. Wiggins looked very tiny beside Wrolf, and Maria felt a little nervous.

  ‘Wrolf — won’t — eat — Wiggins, will he?’ she whispered falteringly to Sir Benjamin.

  ‘No! No! No!’ her guardian assured her hastily. ‘Wrolf took possession of you yesterday morning. Don’t you remember? Not only you yourself; all that is yours is now under his particular protection. Even though not personally attracted by Wiggins, he would die rather than let harm come to a hair of his head.’

  The park was very lovely this morning under the bright silvery sunshine. The promise of spring was a magic in the air that surrounded each flower and tree and scampering lamb with a sort of halo of wonder, as though it were the first flower or tree or lamb that had ever been created. Each glade looked as though it must lead straight into Paradise, and when they stopped a minute, because Darby had a stone in his hoof, they could hear the carolling of the birds like the music of heaven . . .

  But though she looked this way and that Maria did not catch a glimpse of the little white horse . . . And then she forgot about him, looking out eagerly for the tunnel through the rock by which they had entered the park on their arrival. But the road forked, they swerved away to the right and she did not see it.

  ‘Don’t we drive through the tunnel?’ she asked Sir Benjamin.

  ‘No, my dear,’ he said. ‘Don’t you remember the map? Moonacre and the village lie together in a cup in the hills. That tunnel pierces right through the hillside into the outer world. Silverydew is not in the outer world, it’s in our world.’

  And it was so. They drove only a little farther and the road ended at an old broken gate propped open by a stone, and they drove through into the village street.

  ‘What a lovely village!’ cried Maria. ‘Oh, Sir, it’s the loveliest village that ever was!’

  ‘It’s your village,’ said Sir Benjamin.

  ‘And the people are smiling at me!’ cried Maria. ‘Sir, the people are smiling at me as though they knew me!’

  ‘They are your people,’ said Sir Benjamin, lifting his absurd great hat in acknowledgement of the smiles and curtsies and touching of foreheads that made their journey along the village street seem almost like a royal progress. ‘That’s right, Maria. Smile and kiss your hand. They have waited for many a long year to have another Princess at Moonacre.’

  Maria was right to cry out in delight at the sight of Silverydew and its people. There was not such another village, and there were not such people, in the whole of the West Country. The whitewashed cob cottages were thatched with golden straw and set in neat gardens bright with spring flowers. A stream ran down one side of the village street, and each cottage had its own little stone bridge, that spanned the stream before each garden gate. Behind the cottages were orchards, where the thickening buds were crowded together on the trees.

  The cottages all looked prosperous and well cared for, and besides the flowers the gardens had beehives in them and fruit bushes and herb-beds. And the people looked as happy and prosperous as their homes. The children were sturdy as little ponies, healthy and happy, their mothers and fathers strong-looking and serene, the old people as rosy-cheeked and smiling as the children. And their clothes were bright as their gardens, the dresses sprigged with flowers, the bonnets tied with bright ribbons; the colours of the men’s well-worn Sunday coats, bottle-green, hyacinth or plum-colour, rather beautified than dimmed by age.

  Remembering some ugly things that she had seen in London — tumbledown houses and ragged children and poor barefoot beggars — Maria said to herself: ‘This is how it ought to be. This is how it always must be in Silverydew. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep Silverydew always like this.’ And she braced her shoulders and tilted her chin and looked very determined indeed.

  ‘Now we are at the lych-gate,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘Miss Heliotrope — Madam — let me give you my hand.’

  He helped her out of the carriage and offered one arm to her and the other to Maria, and with slow dignity they passed together under the old carved lych-gate and up the steep path through the churchyard to the church porch. Over their heads the bells were pealing joyously such glorious bell-music as Maria had never heard before.

  The bells were actually speaking, though just now she was too confused by happiness to catch the words. She looked up to the tall church tower, bright in the sunlight, and then up to the slopes of Paradise Hill beyond, and then up to the bright blue sky above, and was so happy that she thought she would burst.

  2

  The church was as lovely inside as it was outside, with beautiful soaring pillars like the trunks of trees and arches that sprang upwards like a shout of joy to meet the grand upward curve of the vaulted roof. The windows glowed with the deep rich colours of very old stained glass, and the sun shining through them painted the flag-stones below with all the colours of the rainbow.

  To the left of the chancel steps was a tall pulpit, and to the right was a very old small stone chantry with a small doorway, through which Maria could just make out the figure of a knight in armour lying upon his tomb. At sight of him her heart missed a beat, because she knew, without being told, that the chantry was a Merryweather shrine and that he was her ancestor.

  Under the east window there was a simple stone altar, spread with a clean white linen cloth, and upon the altar step below was a great earthenware pitcher, filled with the first catkins and branches of glorious golden gorse. Though, of course, ladylike behaviour forbade the turning of her head to look, Maria was aware from the sounds of the scraping of chairs, the muffled voices, and the soft tunings of strings, that over the western doorway there was a gallery, and that the village choir, with the fiddles and cellos and Digweed’s double bass, had already arrived.

  And in the tall boxed-in wooden pews many worshippers were gathered, the bonnets of the women and the bare heads of the men just visible to Maria as she passed. Presently, when the villagers they had seen outside had come in also, the church would be quite full. For the people of Silverydew loved their church.

  They were at the door of the Merryweather pew, exactly underneath the pulpit, and Sir Benjamin was motioning to he
r to follow Miss Heliotrope inside. He followed her and shut the door with a click, and now she couldn’t see anything of the church any more, except the roof and the tops of the arches and the upper part of the pulpit, for so high were its walls that the pew was like a little room.

  There was space on the cushioned seat that ran along the back wall for quite a family; a father and mother and ten children could have sat upon it in a row quite easily, Maria thought, so long as some of the children were quite tiny. And when she came to count the hassocks that stood in a row in front of the seat, she noted that there were twelve of them in order of size — a great big one for the father of the family, and a tiny one, hardly bigger than a toadstool, for the youngest child. A broad shelf ran the length of the wall opposite the seat, broad enough for the father and the sons to put their hats on and the mother and daughters their reticules and parasols.

  It was all, in fact, most comfortable and homelike, and kneeling down upon a medium-sized hassock, letting her muff swing on its chain, and laying her prayer-book upon the shelf in front of her, she covered her face with her mittened hands and was glad, because in this pew, as well as in the manor-house, she felt that she had come home.

  ‘All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.’

  The tremendous voice pealing out over her head nearly made her jump out of her skin. It sounded like a great trumpet announcing the end of the world, and she scrambled up from her knees in alarm, almost expecting to see the roof of the church splitting open like a peapod and the blue sky above rolling up like a scroll to let the angels down. But it wasn’t anything of that sort. It was only the Parson announcing the first hymn.

  But what a noise! She had thought Sir Benjamin had a powerful voice, but it was nothing to the Parson’s. And at first sight she had thought Sir Benjamin an odd-looking elderly gentleman, but in oddness he couldn’t hold a candle to the old man in the pulpit. Standing just below him, quite collected and demure again now, her muff still swinging on its chain, and her mittened hands holding her prayer-book, she looked straight up into his face and he looked straight down into hers with a keen searching look rather like Sir Benjamin’s when they had first met. He gave a flashing smile, and she smiled back, and from that moment Maria Merryweather and the Parson of Silverydew were firm friends.

  But there was no doubt about it, he was a very extraordinary old man, more like a scarecrow than anything else. He was very tall and very thin, and he had a brown clean-shaven weatherbeaten face, fine and keen and proud, and beautifully shaped brown hands with very long fingers, and snow-white hair that nearly touched his shoulders. He wore a black cassock and white bands beneath his chin.

  He must have been very old, yet the dark eyes beneath his bushy white eyebrows flashed fire, and his voice — well, for power and volume it was enough to waken the dead. It was wonderfully clear-cut and articulate too, with just the faintest trace of some foreign intonation that gave it charm and originality. He gesticulated with his hands when he spoke, so that they seemed speaking too.

  ‘Now then, good people of Silverydew,’ he cried, his flashing eyes passing over the packed congregation, ‘with all your hearts and souls and voices sing praises.’ Then he raised his head and glanced at the choir in the gallery. ‘And you up there, keep in tune for the love of God.’

  Then he suddenly whisked up a fiddle from somewhere inside the pulpit, tucked it under his chin, raised his right arm with the bow clasped in his thin brown fingers, brought it down upon the strings with superb artistry, and swung his people into the winging splendour of the Old Hundredth, with something of the dash and fire of a cavalry officer leading his men to the charge.

  What a row! Up in the gallery the fiddlers and the cellists and Digweed played like men possessed. Though she could not see them, Maria could picture their red perspiring faces, and their arms sawing back and forth, and their shining eyes almost popping out of their heads with eagerness and joy. And every man and woman and child in the congregation was singing at the top of his or her voice.

  Maria herself sang till her throat ached, with Sir Benjamin upon one side of her bellowing like a foghorn and Miss Heliotrope upon the other trilling like a nightingale. Miss Heliotrope’s trilling astonished Maria. She had never heard Miss Heliotrope trill before. She hadn’t even known she could trill.

  And it seemed to Maria, her imagination running riot to a shocking extent, that beyond the walls of the church she could hear all the birds in the valley singing, and the flowers singing, and the sheep and deer and rabbits singing in the park and woods and fields, and up on the slopes of the great hills. And somewhere the waves of the sea that she had not seen yet were rolling into Merryweather Bay, and crying Amen as they broke upon the shore.

  And up there in the tall pulpit stood the Parson playing the fiddle as Maria had never heard a fiddle played before, and never would again, because no one in all the world ever had, or ever would, play the fiddle as superbly as the Parson of Silverydew.

  The hymn ended and, with a soft rustling of Sunday skirts and petticoats and a creaking at the seams of Sunday coats that were a bit too tight, the congregation sank upon its knees, with the Old Parson, laying aside his violin and standing very straight with his lean brown hands clasped upon his chest, closed his eyes, lifted his head and began to pray, his tremendous voice slightly lowered now, but so clear and true that if any members of his congregation missed a word here and there no excuse could be made for them unless they were stone deaf.

  Maria had never heard anyone pray like this Old Parson, and the way that he did it made her tremble all over with awe and joy. For he talked to God as if he were not only up in heaven, but standing beside him in the pulpit. And not only standing beside him but beside every man, woman, and child in the church — God came alive for Maria as he prayed, and she was so excited and so happy that she could hardly draw her breath.

  And when the Old Parson read the Bible to his people, he did not read it in the sing-song sort of way that the parsons in London had read it, a way that had made one want to go to sleep. He read it as though it were tremendously exciting; dispatches dictated on a battlefield, or a letter written only yesterday and bringing great news. And when he preached, taking as his subject the glorious beauty of the world, and the necessity for praising God for it every moment of the day or else standing convicted of an ingratitude so deep that it was too dreadful even to be spoken of, it was as thrilling as a thunderstorm. In London Maria had always thought about her clothes in the sermon or taken an interest in other members of the congregation, but today she only patted the pleats in her pelisse and stroked her muff a very few times, and only once craned her neck in a futile attempt to see a little something over the top of the pew door.

  Maria listened spellbound. And when they sang the last hymn, in a way that almost lifted the roof off, she found that she was not tired at all, but feeling as fresh as when the service had started.

  After the last Amen had died away, the Old Parson climbed down from the pulpit, and went striding down the aisle, to stand at the west porch and greet his people as they filed out past him. Maria had never seen a parson do this before. But then she had never seen any parson in the least like this old man, or attended any service in the least like this one. Nothing in this enchanted valley seemed in the least like anything anywhere else.

  The Old Parson, it seemed, was one of those people who don’t in the least mind what they say, for as she went down the aisle Maria could hear his tremendous voice scolding a farmer for beating his dog, a mother for letting her child go to school with a dirty face, a boy for robbing a bird’s nest, and a little girl for drinking the milk that had been put out for the cat.

  He seemed to know what each of them had been doing during the past week, and his scoldings were so scorching that Maria thanked heaven that he could not possibly know anything of her own past peccadilloes . . . If he ever really scolded me, I think I should die, she said to herself . . .

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nbsp; Yet none of his people seemed to resent either his scoldings, or the fact that they were so loudly spoken that the porch echoed with them. They went as red as beet-roots, they hung their heads, and they murmured their apologies with real sorrow. In Silverydew, it seemed, the Old Parson was as privileged as though he were a king.

  And he could praise too. Now and then the anger went out of his voice, and a deep note of delight stole into it, like wine poured into water. One little girl had helped her delicate mother with the washing, a young husband had minded the baby while his wife had an outing, and a boy had bound up a puppy’s injured paw, and to hear the warmth with which the Old Parson commended their deeds, you’d think that at the very least they’d saved Queen Victoria from drowning.

  Then the manor-house party reached the porch and the Old Parson was holding Miss Heliotrope’s hand and Miss Heliotrope was all of a twitter. Yet she needn’t have been, for at sight of her the Old Parson’s smile flashed out over his weatherbeaten face, like sunshine over snow. ‘Welcome, Madam,’ he said, giving her much the same greeting as Sir Benjamin had given her upon her arrival. ‘This countryside is honoured by your presence here.’ Then they looked at each other most attentively, and it was obvious to the onlookers that they had taken a great liking for each other. It was with reluctance that the Old Parson relinquished Miss Heliotrope’s hand, and took Sir Benjamin’s instead.

  ‘Squire,’ he bellowed in a sudden wrath, ‘on Wednesday last I found a rabbit caught in a trap in your park. I have told you before, and I tell you again, that if you permit traps to be set for God’s wild creatures on your land you will spend your eternity caught in a trap yourself!’