The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Lucy laid aside the flowers her mother had forgotten, to be rescued later, and the light went out of her eyes, partly because of the flowers but also because she was not of the stuff of which scholars are made. She had a quick mind but not a scholarly one and found lessons a dreary business. If she could have joined Richard and Justus in their studies with Parson Peregrine she might have done better, for masculine company always stimulated her. She did not find women stimulating and sadly she picked up the hornbook which had been her mother’s and grandmother’s before her. Eight years old though she was she could still read and write only with difficulty but she did know her hornbook, alphabet and numerals, ave and paternoster and all. She said the Latin prayers parrot-wise to her mother, who knew no more Latin than she did, but the hornbook was a ritual and they could attend to nothing else until it was accomplished. The ritual over they turned to what Elizabeth considered really important, the sewing of the sampler which Lucy now took from the cupboard. At present she excelled in no feminine accomplishments whatever, except those of laughter and beguilement, and her sampler was a pitiful thing, grubby and bloodstained, and Elizabeth sighed afresh at sight of it. William, surprisingly clever at such things, had designed the sampler and drawn it out on the canvas. It had a simple all-over pattern, but was embellished with what Elizabeth’s pattern book called “Sundry sorts of spots, as flowers, Birds and Fishes,” and one of these birds was the family heron. Below a space had been left for Lucy’s initials, when the sampler should be finished; an outcome that was at present despaired of.

  She stood now beside her mother, for in her sore state it was easier to stand than to sit on the wooden stool, tangling her thread and pricking her finger but doing her best. Elizabeth meanwhile went on with her letter, looking up now and then to inspect progress, but not looking at her daughter’s face until the breath of a strangled sigh tickled her ear. Then she looked round and saw Lucy with her face drained of colour and dark smudges beneath her eyes.

  “Are you tired, Lucy?”

  “No, madam,” said Lucy. But Elizabeth perceived that the child was very tired and putting her arm round her she guided her to the settle and made her lie down on her side on the cushions. She was full of compunction. Absorbed in her letter to her mother she had forgotten about Lucy’s whipping.

  “Did Nan-Nan give you breakfast, cariad?”

  “She wished to, madam, but I did not want to eat.”

  Now that she was delivered from standing, the colour was beginning to come back to Lucy’s face and she realized that for once in a way she had her mother at her mercy. A small dimple that she had in her left cheek showed itself. “Could we have a reading lesson now, madam? Not me reading to you. You reading to me.”

  “What shall I read to you?”

  “About Prince Kilhwch in the Mabinogion.”

  “Always the same story, cariad,” said Elizabeth, as she took the old calfbound book from the cupboard. “Would you not like something different?”

  Lying in state on the couch with her lady-in-waiting attending upon her Lucy was the Princess Nest. “I prefer the one I have mentioned,” she said with hauteur.

  Annihilated, Elizabeth sat on the floor beside her daughter and opened the book. It was a family heirloom. The pages were edged with gold and the capital letters beautified by delicate tracings in scarlet ink. The Mabinogion told the stories of the kings and queens and heroes of ancient Wales. It wove a web of mystery and glamour over the beginnings of the race, the same sort of splendour as had been woven for the English by Le Morte d’Arthur. It was a proud thing to belong to a people whose dawn had broken with such glory and if sceptics suggested exaggeration they could bring no proof to the support of their doubts.

  Lucy and Elizabeth did not bother with doubts. The Mabinogion took them over the border to the other country and all that happened there was true for them because the country was true. Elizabeth had a beautiful voice and she read well, though slowly, for she was no more of a scholar than Lucy. She could do her household accounts and write a passable letter in a fine spidery hand, but when she read aloud it was with a difficulty which she disguised with this lovely carefulness that turned everything into poetry even if it were not poetry already. Though Lucy considered that the description of Prince Kilhwch was poetry already. “And the youth pricked forth upon a steed with head dappled grey, of four winters old, firm of limb, with shell-formed hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold on his head, and upon him a saddle of costly gold. And in the youth’s hand were two spears of silver, sharp, well-tempered, headed with steel three ells in length, of an edge to wound the wind, and cause blood to flow, and swifter than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at the heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was upon his thigh, the blade of which was of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of the hue of the lightning of heaven: his war-horn was of ivory. Before him were two brindled white-breasted greyhounds, having strong collars of rubies about their necks, reaching from the shoulder to the ear. And the one that was on the left side bounded across to the right side, and the one on the right to the left, and like two sea-swallows sported around him. And his courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs, like four swallows in the air, about his head, now above, now below. About him was a four-cornered cloth of purple, and an apple of gold was at each corner, and every one of the apples was of the value of an hundred kine. And there was precious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes, and upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe. And the blade of grass bent not beneath him, so light was his courser’s tread.”

  And no less poetical was the description of Olwen. “More yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three-mewed falcon was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest roses. Whoso beheld her was filled with her love. Four white trefoils sprung up wherever she trod. And therefore was she called Olwen.”

  “Pity it is her hair was gold,” Lucy murmured. She was getting very sleepy and there came to her that double awareness that can draw the far into the near and see the near enclosed in the far and rest in their one-ness. The prince and princess of the story were not separated from the morning sunshine sparkling on the gold edged pages of the book, or her mother’s rose-pink skirt spread out upon the floor. She took these things to herself as one thing and as the story progressed curled up inside it and went to sleep.

  Three

  1

  Parson Peregrine was an excellent if eccentric instructor of the young. Richard was coming on well with his Latin and Justus could already read and write far better than Lucy. On the whole they liked their lessons, though Richard did not like Parson Peregrine, and they ran willingly to school on a warm rose-scented day a month later.

  Richard ran the faster because of his slender lightness but Justus followed after at a good pace, his fat legs pounding gallantly. The boys were taught with the other village children in the church, as was often the custom, but they had to go to the parsonage first to fetch their tutor, who would have forgotten all about them had he not been reminded of their existence. The parsonage was no more than a large cottage separated from the church by a grassy lane, its round chimney nearly disappearing in the deep thatch of the roof, with white-washed cob walls. It stood in an untidy little garden with a pigsty at one side of it and the hen-run at the back. But Ptolemy the pig, and the hens who were named after the twelve tribes of Israel, went where they pleased. Ptolemy this morning was lying across the open front door and the boys had to scramble over his placid bulk to gain entrance, and the living room contained several Israelites pecking about on the floor of beaten earth. Parson Peregrine sat among them in his cha
ir, his feet on the table among his pens and papers, lost in a book he was reading. There were many books in the room, in shelves and piled on the floor, but not much else, only the hearthplace and the old priest’s cloak, green with age, hanging on a peg. The kitchen, where Parson Peregrine prepared the pig-wash and the chicken-food and his own scanty meals, led out of the living room, and the open door between the two rooms showed a scene of indescribable confusion. For Parson Peregrine had no housekeeper and did not want one, or any female assistance whatever. A bachelor, and a scholar to the marrow of his bones, he was inimical to interruption of any sort except that demanded by his priestly work, and even to that he had to be recalled by the church bell or a hand on his shoulder. But though books were the love of his life he was not without affection for living creatures, especially if they were susceptible to instruction.

  “Sir!” shouted Richard, his hand gripping his tutor’s shoulder.

  Parson Peregrine turned a page.

  “Sir!” shouted Richard again and shook the old man with all his strength.

  Parson Peregrine turned his head and transfixed Richard with a piercing glare. “Miserable boy!” he said with cold fury, and returned to his book. Richard took it forcibly from him and Justus removed his feet from the table. With the roar of a wounded bull he lurched to his feet, seized each boy by the scruff of his neck and knocked their heads together. But not too hard. They saw stars but not too many. “Wretched infants!” he groaned. “Deio! Deio! what troubles there are in the world!” Grasping the boys by their jerkins, one in each vast brown hand, he shook them like rats, kicking out meanwhile at the poultry squawking about his feet. “Benjamin. Judah. Dan. Detestable birds! Get you away out of my sight. That I should be so tormented in my old age! The devil take the lot of you!”

  Suddenly it was all over. The hysterical hens scurried up and over the imperturbable form of Ptolemy and away into the garden, Parson Peregrine let go of the boys and thrust his feet into the clogs that stood beside his chair, staring at his pupils as though he had never set eyes on them before. In the deep silence that followed it was as though his mind, like a great gun, swung slowly into a fresh position. Then he got the new target into focus. Two small boys grinning at him and not at all afraid. His grim brown seamed face softened slightly. “Abominable children!” he growled with affection. “How long, O God, how long?”

  He was an impressive if extraordinary figure when he stood upright. He was massive and strong and gave the impression of being roughhewn from a piece of oak. His beard was red, streaked with grey, his eyes a fiery blue. His rough country clothes were strangely surmounted by the square scholar’s cap he always wore on his bald head. He was fastidious in his person if not in his household, his beard carefully trimmed to a Vandycke point and his linen clean. He was well born and but for his intolerance and eccentricity he might have gone far in the world. As it was he remained a country parson with a stipend of twenty pounds a year, which he increased slightly by his teaching.

  “Wretched child, fetch me my cloak,” he said peremptorily to Justus.

  Justus took the shabby cloak from its peg and the old man put it on. He always wore it, whatever the weather, when he took upon him his tutorial or priestly work, and with it a certain increase of dignity. Whatever he wore he could still command respect from others but only in his cloak could he still respect himself.

  “Come on now, boys,” he thundered. “Are we to be here all the morning? Out from under my feet, thou son of Belial.”

  The last remark was addressed to Ptolemy. The boys could climb over the pig’s great bulk, but Parson Peregrine was rheumatic and could not. Ptolemy removed himself with a protesting grunt to a shady patch in the garden and the boys and their tutor progressed with dignity, in single file, down the garden path and across the lane to the churchyard. The trees drenched it in deep shade but here and there a shaft of sunlight pierced through and touched the moondaisies that grew among the graves. The wind from the sea stirred the tops of the trees, but the faint surge of sound could scarcely be heard above the singing of the birds. The path was mossgrown and dulled their footsteps so that they came with great quietness to the dark porch that was cold and dark as a cave. Parson Peregrine unlocked the door and they went in.

  Inside the church the light was clear and cool for there was no stained glass in the windows, the colour in them being only the shimmering green of the leaves outside. Parson Peregrine, a disciple of Archbishop Laud whom he had known well when he was Bishop of St. Davids, now had all things in his church as the Archbishop would have wished. It had not been so when he had come here six years ago. He had found the church dirty and untidy and his parishioners slack about their religious duties, since they had found no help in their vicar, an old man who had despaired in his poverty and hanged himself from a tree in the churchyard. William had deplored his own youthful carelessness that had allowed such a thing to happen, and though he was a merely nominal churchman he had allowed himself to be elected as churchwarden and done what he could to help Parson Peregrine. Elizabeth’s rigid piety had done the same and now the church had paving stones instead of the previous earth floor, a table under the east window with a rail in front and the ten commandments inscribed on the east wall to right and left. Parson Peregrine hankered after box pews instead of the old-fashioned benches but William had turned testy after the ten commandments. Parson Peregrine had painted them on the wall himself two years ago and entirely by accident had begun a fresh pot of paint at number seven so that it stood out very black. William was not a man to bear malice for long but his good humour was laced with obstinacy and Parson Peregrine knew that he would never now win his box pews. The church was the lovelier without them, had he but known, for they would have dwarfed the low beautiful font in which all the Walter children had been baptized and in which they took a personal pride.

  The village children sat on benches under the tower but Richard and Justus, being the squire’s sons, were taught in the vestry, among the old-fashioned suits of armour and the powder barrels and firearms stored there against invasion, but during instruction the curtains between vestry and church, gentry and proletariat, were looped back so that Parson Peregrine could pass backwards and forwards between the two. “Ring the bell, Richard,” he commanded and Richard pulled at the bell-rope that hung beneath the tower and the single bell that summoned the village children rang out. They had been playing in the lane and soon there was a starling sound of wing rush and piping chatter, then the rattle of clogs in the flagged porch and they trooped in, the children of the men who cared for William Walter’s land and beasts, a few yeomen’s sons and the handful of children who lived in the fishermen’s cottages at the bay below the mill. They were most of them poor children, bunchily clad in poor clothes, but sturdy and strong, for William saw to it that none of his people ever went hungry. They bobbed their curtseys and pulled at the ragged hair that fell over their eyes and scurried grinning to their places, while Parson Peregrine roared at the stragglers and reminded them of the rod for bad boys that he kept in the belfry. They had taken Parson Peregrine’s measure long ago. He was as good as a cock fight and he never used that mythical rod.

  Parson Peregrine opened precedings by instructing the castle and the village alike in the catechism and teaching them to repeat simple hymns by rote. Later, with the help of a blackboard, he taught the village a little simple arithmetic and as much reading and writing as he considered necessary for their station in life. Meanwhile Richard and Justus in the vestry were labouring at their Latin. Parson Peregrine passed backwards and forwards between the two and somehow, like a juggler tossing up coloured balls and catching them again, he kept them all hard at it.

  This hour and a half of combined instruction ended with Parson Peregrine reading the children a chapter from the bible. Starting at the vestry, with his bible in his left hand and his right hand raised and moving in time to the magic of the verses, he would pace up the c
hurch to the chancel steps, turn and then come back again, and so till the chapter was finished. Though he raised his voice till it sounded like the sea booming in a cave it was not always possible for the children to hear what he said when his back was turned to them, but the very rhythm of the thing kept them spellbound and they never took their eyes off the erect pacing figure in the tattered cloak, his big head thrown back as he declaimed and sunlight, sometimes, glinting on his red beard. He chose the more dramatic of the old testament stories for declamation and the passage of the Red Sea, the falling of the walls of Jericho and the adventures of Elijah and of David became for the children marvellous experiences. The new testament chapters came in a different category for when he read these Parson Peregrine was different, less of a virtuoso and more of a priest, administering rather than entertaining. But he was no less dramatic. The Passion sequences made the more sensitive of the children tremble and the memory of Parson Peregrine crying out at the chancel steps, “In the beginning was the Word,” was something that remained with Justus till the hour of his death. The reading over, the village children repeated the Lord’s Prayer, were blessed and made for the door in an orderly manner. But outside pandemonium was heard to break forth. No more starling music. It was more like Ptolemy and his land demanding their dinner. There was a quirk of amusement on their schoolmaster’s grim mouth as he drew the vestry curtains, shutting himself in with his more advanced pupils. Then it vanished, his terrible red eyebrows drew together and Richard and Justus involuntarily tightened their muscles in apprehension.

  For the next hour they were educated without mercy. They were intelligent boys and physically Richard was equal to the strain, but Justus was a little young for it, and when the church clock boomed out the hour of liberation he was a little white under his sunburn, and when they came out into the churchyard he was so happy to be free that he went leaping away through the wild flowers in the long grass, jumping over the low gravestones, cavorting like a pony that has been put out to grass.