The Little White Horse Read online

  Sir Benjamin, whose face was red as a beetroot at the best of times and couldn’t go much redder, went a deep purple and loosened his stock. ‘It’s not my fault, Parson,’ he said. ‘Those black-hearted fellows from Merryweather Bay set traps on my land without my knowledge.’

  ‘I’ll put up with none of your excuses, Squire,’ boomed the old man. ‘You hold your park in trust from God, and every inch of it should be kept constantly beneath your eyes. You stand convicted, Squire, of gross laziness and neglect of duty. Take the necessary steps to see that the cruelty is not repeated.’

  Sir Benjamin did not say, as he very well might, that it was quite impossible to keep his eye upon every inch of a park the size of his. He didn’t say anything. He just rubbed his great beak of a nose with his forefinger and looked most terribly worried.

  Then it was Maria’s turn, and she found that she had been too optimistic in thinking that the Old Parson knew nothing as yet of her faults and failings. ‘Neatness of attire is to be commended in a woman,’ he told her, holding her hand in a grip of steel. ‘But not vanity. Vanity is of the devil. And excessive female curiosity is not to be commended either. Nip it in the bud, my dear, while there is time.’

  So he had seen her patting her pelisse and stroking her muff . . . So he had noticed her trying to see over the door of the pew . . . She did not hang her head, for that was not her way, but the eyes that she kept unwaveringly upon the Old Parson’s face filled with tears, and she blushed rose-pink from forehead to neck . . . Because she discovered suddenly that the approval of the Old Parson was something that she wanted terribly badly, and she appeared to have lost it already.

  But no. The anger went out of his voice, and that warm note of commendation took its place. ‘A true Merryweather,’ he said. ‘Come here whenever you like, child. This church is especially the home of the young.’

  Then once more he gave her the flashing smile that he had given her when he had looked down at her from his pulpit, and she curtsied, and then she and Sir Benjamin and Miss Heliotrope once more made a royal progress from the porch to the lych-gate, with Sir Benjamin stopping every minute to introduce her to first one and then another of the smiling villagers. ‘The little lady be a true Merryweather,’ they kept saying. And one old man whispered to her very low, so that only she heard what he said: ‘Be you the one, my dear?’ And an old woman whispered: ‘Keep a stout heart, dearie, for maybe ‘twill be you.’

  To these Maria could only reply with a smile, because she did not know what they were talking about.

  3

  Driving home again in the carriage, Maria asked Sir Benjamin what the Old Parson had meant by saying that the church was especially the home of the young.

  ‘He likes the children of the parish to use the church as a nursery,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘He lets them play with the little statue of the Virgin, and the bell, and he tells them stories. I must tell you, Maria, that out in the world beyond our valley Old Parson is regarded as something of an oddity. He is scarcely approved of in some quarters, though here in the valley we love and revere him. He is, of course, unusual. He says what he likes and does what he likes, and has done since he first came here forty years ago. He is the true king of this small kingdom, an aristocrat to the last drop of blood in his body. I’ve never known what his ancestry was, but I’ll eat my hat if there’s not royal blood in him somewhere.’

  ‘You say, Sir, that he came here forty years ago?’ said Miss Heliotrope.

  ‘About that,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘I don’t know anything about his past history. The only thing he ever told me about himself was that he was once an atheist, but riding one day in a thunderstorm his horse took fright and threw him, and the bad blow on the head which he received through the fall knocked sense into him. He saw the error of his thought, was converted, and became a priest.’

  Miss Heliotrope sighed deeply and was silent until the manor-house came in sight. Then she suddenly roused herself.

  ‘Maria,’ she said, ‘you are sitting carelessly. Put your shoulders back. Sit up. After dinner you must spend an hour upon your backboard, before you read our Sunday sermon to me.’

  Maria sighed.

  ‘Another sermon?’ asked Sir Benjamin in tones of shocked sympathy that were as balm to Maria. ‘Why, the one we had this morning lasted a good hour!’

  ‘Every Sunday afternoon,’ said Miss Heliotrope firmly, ‘Maria reads aloud to me one of the sermons composed by my excellent father.’

  ‘Even on a fine Sunday afternoon?’ asked Sir Benjamin, obeying an appealing glance directed at him by Maria over the top of her muff.

  ‘I have never taken weather into consideration in my training of Maria,’ Miss Heliotrope informed him. ‘In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.’

  She spoke so sternly, and her nose looked so alarming, that Sir Benjamin said no more, and neither did Maria. She straightened her shoulders and smiled at Miss Heliotrope because she did not want her to think that she loved her less because they had come to this wonderful place. Wherever she was, whatever she did, however many new and exciting people she would find to love in this new and exciting life, Miss Heliotrope would always be her dearest and her best. Sir Benjamin meanwhile fell into an anxious reverie, and every now and then Maria heard him muttering, ‘That trap! They are up to their tricks again! There’s no end to it. Just no end.’

  In the parlour after dinner, lying flat on the backboard that had now been placed there together with the globe, the lesson books, the quill pens, the pencils, paint-brushes, and watercolour paints that were the paraphernalia of Maria’s education, she wondered what it was of which there was no end. Were those wicked men who would not sell their fish to the village people, and set traps in the park, a really serious threat to the happiness of the valley? The people of Silverydew had looked happy and prosperous, but people often had worries which did not show outside. She did not want her people to be worried.

  ‘They shan’t be worried,’ she said to herself. ‘I’ll find out what’s wrong and put it right. I’ll be — what did that old woman say? — “the one” to put it right.’

  Then she laughed at herself, for if Sir Benjamin, who knew what was wrong, could not put it right, how could she, who did not know?

  ‘I’ll find out,’ she said. And when Miss Heliotrope came in with the book of sermons she was lying on her backboard looking so stonily determined that her governess thought she was going to be rebellious and naughty about the sermon-reading.

  But Maria jumped up with a loving smile, took the book, and read aloud more beautifully than she had ever done before.

  ‘Dear child!’ thought Miss Heliotrope. ‘Moonacre Manor seems to have upon her an influence which is all for good.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1

  THE next morning Maria woke up so early that the only light outside her little room was the faint grey light of dawn’s beginning. She lay quiet for a little while, listening to the faint country noises, the rustle of leaves, the twitter of birds, the bleating of the lambs in the park, and the cry of an early seagull flying over the roof. Woven together these noises were the notes of a line of music that moved her strangely, as though her heart itself were the keyboard over which the music stirred. Then Wiggins, stretched at her feet, awoke and snorted, and the rather worldly noise that he made (he had a very worldly snort) brought her instantly to remembrance of what she was going to do this morning — find out what the kitchen was like and endeavour to set eyes upon that illusive creature, Zachariah the cat. In the twinkling of an eye she had flung her bedclothes back and leaped out of bed.

  She had awakened early, but not too early for the good person who cared for her comforts; as before, her fire was alight, her hot water was waiting for her, and her riding things put ready.

  Maria washed and dressed so quickly that the light was still only grey and dim as she and Wiggins stole down the tower stairs. But the curtains had been drawn back
in the parlour, and the fire was already lit in the great hall, with a wakeful Wrolf stretched before it blinking at the flames. He got to his feet when he saw her, and stood looking at her, his tawny eyes shining in the dimness with a light that seemed somehow affectionate and welcoming, slowly swinging his great tail. She had the feeling that he was waiting for her; waiting to take her out.

  ‘In a minute, Wrolf,’ she said. ‘I just want to look at the kitchen.’

  Wrolf’s tail stopped waving, and the affectionate shining of his eyes changed all in a moment to a frightening blaze of contemptuous anger . . . Almost he looked as though he might eat her . . . She sped past him in terror and laid her hand upon the latch of the kitchen door, anxious now not only to see the kitchen but to get away from Wrolf.

  But here, in spite of her fear, she paused, for there suddenly flashed into her mind something that the Old Parson had said to her yesterday.

  ‘Excessive female curiosity is not to be commended. Nip it in the bud, my dear, while there is time.’

  Gentlemen, it seemed, did not like females to be curious — though it was difficult to see how one could find out what one wanted to know if one wasn’t. Sir Benjamin had not shown her the kitchen yesterday, she remembered suddenly. Perhaps he did not want her to see it yet. It seemed to her that the omission was much the same as marking PRIVATE upon the door. Perhaps she had better wait a little. Bitterly disappointed, she dropped her hand from the latch, and with all the courage that she had forced herself to turn back and face the angry Wrolf . . .

  But he wasn’t angry any more . . . His tail was swinging once again, and his eyes beaming with affection. She ran to him and caressed his great head, and was ashamed of herself that she had thought he was going to eat her. Of course he hadn’t even thought of such a thing! Hadn’t he completely accepted her only the day before yesterday? He had been merely recalling her to honourable Merryweather behaviour.

  ‘I’m going exploring on Periwinkle, Wrolf,’ she said to him. ‘Come with me and take care of me.’

  Immediately Wrolf stalked to the great front door, lifted the latch with his nose, swung the door open with one of his great paws, and preceded her and Wiggins down the steps and along the path to the stable-yard.

  Periwinkle, or Joy-of-the-ground, was wide awake in her stall when Maria and Wrolf and Wiggins went in. She whinnied joyfully, and then stood perfectly still while Maria, slowly and fumblingly because this was the first time that she had done it, saddled her, and adjusted bit and bridle, and then she ambled of her own accord out of the stable to the mounting-block beside the steps leading to the back door, and stood still for Maria to mount her. And then the little cavalcade, Maria on Periwinkle with Wrolf and Wiggins one on each side of her, trotted happily out of the stable-yard, through the garden, and out through the door under the great archway into the park. It was not locked. Sir Benjamin had told Maria that it was never locked. He liked to feel that the villagers could get to him at any hour of the day or night if they were in trouble.

  Maria knew exactly what she wanted to do when she got into the park. Without a moment’s hesitation she swung east. She must not go to Merryweather Bay, but she would explore the park in that direction . . . She might perhaps see the sea in the distance.

  The morning was enough to make anyone feel joyous. The tawny grass was still crisp and sparkling with frost under the pony’s flying feet, and overhead the swelling buds on the trees, just catching the rising sun, were ruby red against a sky of sheeted gold. The air was like wine, warm and yet still laced with the sharp tang of the frost.

  Maria had no difficulty in keeping her seat today. She rode as though she had been riding all her life, managing her reins and crop quite easily, able now and then to lift a hand to her head when her feathered hat threatened to come off.

  There were not so many trees in this part of the park, and as she rode they thinned out more and more, the beeches and oak-trees and bushes of golden gorse giving place to solitary groups of wind-twisted pines, with here and there boulders of grey rock pushing their way through the tussocks of heather. To the cold fresh tang of the frost there was added now the salt tang of the sea. Maria had not met with it before, but she knew at once what it was and sniffed joyously.

  The seagulls were with her now in even greater numbers, calling to her, leading her on. She looked up at them, and laughed and waved her crop. Soon now she might see the sea.

  2

  But, as it turned out, she did not see it that morning. In mid-gallop she was halted by a strange and terrible sound, a thin high screaming that came threading through the happy sounds of the wind and the crying gulls and Periwinkle’s galloping feet, and pushing into her heart like a sharp needle.

  She pulled in her pony and sat listening, her heart beating fast with sudden fear. Away to her right, beyond a sombre belt of pine-trees, was a deep hollow filled with gorse and blackberry bushes, and from it came the frightening sound. Somewhere down there some child or animal was being hurt. She hesitated for only a moment, and then, gulping down the fear that had come up like a hard lump into her throat, she turned Periwinkle away from the longed-for sight of the sea and rode hard for the hollow beyond the pines.

  The sides of it were so steep and stony, and so thickly grown with gorse, that she had to dismount and, leaving Periwinkle beneath the pine-trees, climb down by herself. Wiggins, after one glance at the prickly gorse, decided to stay under the pine-trees too, and Wrolf did the same, lying down with nose on paws beside Wiggins.

  It surprised and hurt her that Wrolf should not come with her, because somehow she had thought he would want to take care of her. It made her more afraid too. But she went on just the same, pushing her way down through the thick bushes, her face and hands getting scratched and torn, and that horrible screaming sound coming nearer and nearer.

  As she neared the bottom of the hollow the bushes thinned out, and she could see that down below there was a clear space of turf carpeted with primroses like a round embroidered green carpet. Maria would have exclaimed in delight at the beauty of the place, only the beauty was spoiled for her because on the centre of the carpet was a trap, and caught in the trap was a screaming hare.

  Maria did not know it was a hare, because she had never seen one before. She thought it was an outsize rabbit; and immediately she remembered the little scene between Sir Benjamin and Old Parson yesterday, and Sir Benjamin’s worried exclamations as they drove home . . . Who had set that trap?

  In a minute she knew, for as she pushed her way down through the bushes to rescue the poor hare she saw another figure coming quickly down upon the other side of the hollow, a tall man dressed all in black: black trousers pushed into black sea-boots, and a black fisherman’s jersey, with a matted black beard, carrying in his hand a cruel-looking cudgel, and with a black cock sitting on his shoulder. She could not see him very clearly, because her fear was now not only a lump in her throat but a mist in her eyes, but she knew quite well that he had set the trap and that he was going to kill the hare with his cudgel . . . That is, if she did not get there first and save it . . .

  She ran, and he, catching sight of her, ran too; but she got there first, catching her foot in a rabbit hole and falling headlong at his feet just as he raised his cudgel to finish off the hare.

  ‘Let that rabbit alone!’ she cried, all her fear suddenly lost in a surge of hot anger and passionate love for the hare. ‘Let it alone. It’s my rabbit! It’s my rabbit, I tell you!’

  The man laughed and swung up his cudgel again, and it might have gone ill with the hare, and perhaps with Maria too, had it not been for the sudden appearance upon the scene of Someone Else.

  Maria, bewildered by her fear, still all in a fury of love and anger, was aware of a slim brown figure bounding towards her, of a curly head lowered like that of a butting goat, and then over went the man in black flat on his back, well and truly winded, while there rang through the hollow a laugh as merry and carefree as a cuckoo’s cry, a boy’s
laugh, clear as a bell, a Puck’s laugh, full of impish glee.

  ‘Quick! Quick!’ cried a joyous voice that was as familiar to Maria as the answering beat of her own heart, in equal joy. ‘Hold the hare while I unfasten the trap. Then run! There’ll be more of them about. The Men from the Dark Woods never hunt alone. Quick!’

  They ran to the trap, and Maria, her slim hands clasped about the panting body of the poor hare, in her bewilderment saw no more of her companion than strong brown fingers skilfully loosing the hideous rings of steel that had closed upon the hare’s left hind leg. But those brown fingers were as familiar to her as her own white ones.

  ‘Now run!’ said the boy, and they ran, the boy going first with the hare in his arms, leaping nimbly up the slope in the direction from which Maria had come, Maria following after, panting and stumbling in her efforts to keep him in sight. They reached the top of the hollow, and there was Periwinkle still waiting with Wiggins. Wrolf was there too, but he was not lying down now, he was standing planted firmly on his four feet, lashing his tail and growling like a thunderstorm, his great blazing eyes fixed upon the shadows beneath the pine-trees, where dark figures skulked, tall thin nightmare figures that were hardly distinguishable from the pine-trees, yet made one afraid, like the yew-tree men in the garden.

  Now Maria knew why Wrolf had not come down with her into the hollow; he had stayed up here to keep those nightmare figures at bay. He had known better than she did how he could best be of service to her.

  ‘Canter for home!’ commanded the boy, and Maria scrambled into the saddle and they were off, the boy running on one side of her with the hare in his arms, and Wiggins running on the other . . . Wrolf stayed behind.

  Within sight of the manor, Periwinkle stopped cantering and slipped into a gentle ambling trot, for the danger, it seemed, was left behind now. Maria had got her breath back and her wits about her again and was gazing wonderingly and joyfully at the boy beside her, and he was looking back at her and laughing.