The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  The door opened softly and there was the faint rustle of a starched apron. Some maidservant had come to tell her that Nan-Nan was dead but she could neither move nor speak.

  “Lucy!” cried Nan-Nan in alarm. “Lucy, cariad, merchi, where are you?”

  Bellowing with relief Lucy tore aside the curtains and precipitated herself upon Nan-Nan, with such violence that the old woman staggered backward to a chair and collapsed into it with Lucy on top of her.

  “You are not dead, Nan-Nan, you are not dead!” gasped Lucy when her storm of tears had subsided to a mere backwash of hiccups.

  “I am not,” said Nan-Nan. “And you should be ashamed to cry so at your age. You are a young lady now, not a baby, a young lady going to London for her education. There now, Lucy fach, time is passing. Getting you dressed I should be. Do not give me trouble, cariad, for it is tired I am.”

  Her voice, coming from a sore throat, was a mere hoarse thread of sound. It was the first complaint Lucy had ever heard from her and she gazed at her in astonishment. “Have not you been to bed all night, Nan-Nan?” she asked.

  “No, cariad. Your mother has been ill all night. She is better now but I have something sorrowful to tell you.”

  “I know,” said Lucy. “My mother has dropped a dead baby. I do not mind. You are not dead.”

  Her practical tone shocked Nan-Nan. “Lucy!” she expostulated. “You should be grieving for your poor mother.”

  “My father told her not to ride in the coach,” said Lucy. “Soon I shall grieve for my mother, and for my father, for it is sad to lose a baby. But I cannot grieve overmuch just now because you are alive.”

  Nan-Nan clacked her tongue, dislodged Lucy from her lap and propelled her towards the ewer and basin that stood on a little chest. She said something about too many eggs in one basket leading to a broken heart, but Lucy could not hear it properly through the splashing of water.

  3

  William waited only until his wife had revived before setting out for London, for on this visit he had found himself even more uncomfortable than usual at Golden Grove. Those few moments on the bridge above the stream, when he had held Elizabeth in his arms and she had been glad to be there, had vanished like all the other moments when he had hoped he might even yet win her, no more than a sudden leap of flame from a dead fire, an intuition of what might have been instantly lost in the greyness of actuality. Lying against her lace-trimmed pillows, serene in the luxury that so befitted her, she allowed him to kiss her cool cheek in goodbye but she gave him no answering kiss, and her eyes, meeting his for a moment, answered his appeal with aloof reproach. Her eyes told him that she was in no way to blame for the loss of the child. Someone was, naturally, but not Elizabeth. This attitude was shared by the Earl and Lady Carbery. Their exquisite courtesy never failed them throughout William’s visit, but Elizabeth belonged to Golden Grove through the double ties of relationship and compatibility and they were not able to take an objective view of her. Upon William it was possible to sit in silent judgment, and he was glad to say goodbye.

  But not to Lucy, as she stood on the mounting block embracing his left leg. “No, you cannot come too, Bud,” he said. “And you like being here.”

  She merely wept. His sons were close to them, his host and hostess still stood courteously at the top of the steps where they had bade him goodbye. There was nothing he could say. He put his hand for a moment on her rough dark head, lifted his hat in farewell and rode away. They watched him disappear down the avenue, through the drifting leaves and the thin autumn sunshine, getting smaller and smaller until he disappeared in the blue mist that spread beneath the trees. Then Lucy pushed her brothers, even Justus, fiercely out of the way and ran to her special place, the marble bench by the damask rose tree.

  The moment she knew she was alone she felt better, for William would soon be sending for them and it was true that she liked being at Golden Grove. Though the wildness of Roch, and all it stood for in the way of freedom and adventure, was the true home of her buccaneering spirit, there was something in her that could rise to the royalty of Golden Grove. When occasion demanded she could play the great lady very well indeed; and quite instinctively, for the golden thread of the Princess Nest was interwoven with the buccaneer, and for a short while she could enjoy the calm of gracious living.

  The peace of Golden Grove was not the quiet of the woods or the mountains, for staying here she was intuitively aware of the immensity of labour that had this quietness as its focal point. At home their old Gwladys and the others had seemed down among the stony roots of Roch, but here the toil seemed to stretch out and away like the spokes of a turning humming wheel. She could hear the faint humming, like distant music, here where she sat at the unmoving silent heart of it all, the music that others made for her, giving their peace for hers.

  The marble seat was white as the last rose blossom, opening unexpectedly in this late glow of warmth. She felt the cool petals against her cheek and turning her head she saw the leaves like lifted hands holding it out to her. She lifted her hands too and then dropped them, afraid to touch the flower lest she bruise it. Instead she looked deep into its heart, that glowed golden at the centre of the exquisite whiteness. The very faint perfume came to her. She looked and time ceased. The world went away too, even Golden Grove. Only she and the flower existed. Then she too stole away from herself, though sight remained that could look upon the flower, and song remained, for she was singing to it. When she first began to hear the song she did not know it was herself that was singing, she thought it was a seraph behind her in the tree; or the tree itself. Yes, the tree was certainly singing. They sang together for a while, and the trees in the park sang; looking up she saw the gold and crimson leaves like tongues of singing fire drifting through the air. The terrace was carpeted with fallen leaves and when she stretched her toes down and touched them gently they sang too. The sharp sweetness of a robin’s song chimed in and the world was full of praise.

  A tall figure stood before her. She came back to herself and looking up saw Lord Carbery. She smiled at him. “Did you hear the singing?” she asked.

  He had heard her soft piping, and the robin’s song, a duet that had enchanted him, and he returned the smile with tenderness. He was an impressive figure in his mulberry-coloured coat with snowy collar and cuffs edged with lace. His greying hair fell curling to his shoulders, his beard was cut to a point and hid his alarming chin. But his aristocratic nose could alarm, and his penetrating glance. Lucy however was not afraid of him. Women frightened her sometimes, with their critical eyes and sharp tongues, but not men. She slid off the seat and curtseyed. When he had seen her last she had been a small child whom he had held on his knee and fed with comfits, but now she seemed almost a maiden. The two years that had passed for him as a mere flash of a bird’s wing had been for her a long journey packed with new experience and astonishing growth. He was about to take a stroll around the nearer portions of his dominion and he desired her company. He held out his hand and she slipped hers into it. She suited her steps to his walk, lifting her skirts with her free hand. She chatted beside him as they went, knowing that gentlemen must be entertained. Being a little deaf and so far above her, he did not hear all she said, but the music of her voice was delightful to him.

  They visited the stable, where the doves strutted on the cobbles and the great bell tolled out the hour over their heads. They fed Prince with windfall apples and Lucy said sadly but with careful distinctness, for she had now realized the slight deafness, that though Richard had this pony of his own, she and Justus had no ponies. For the period of their visit that could be rectified, said the Earl. There were two gentle silver ponies who pulled his wife’s chariot. They were found, inspected, approved and fed. Lucy was always very much at home in stables. She liked the smell of hay and horses, the stamping of hoofs on the cobbles, the sunlight slanting through dusty windows and the great coaches looming in the shado
ws of the coach houses. The humble stables at Roch could not compare with these but Lucy was loyal to them and remembered Jeremiah with a pain at her heart.

  They inspected the walled kitchen garden, where the mellow sun was so trapped that it was as warm as summer, and paced slowly through the clipped yews to the pool where the fish swam, and then they threaded the maze of Lady Carbery’s knot garden, fragrant with herbs. The Earl picked a sprig of rosemary for Lucy and presented it with a bow, as though she had been a great lady; there was no mockery in the bow for it was a heartfelt tribute to female charm. Lucy felt herself grow several inches during the period of this promenade, a faint pink flush came to her brown cheeks and she flashed her blue glance upwards as often as she dared, watching for the Earl’s smile in response. She had already bewitched her father, John Shepherd, Old Parson and the sin-eater without being conscious of the fact, but the Earl was different, so different that she knew now what she could do.

  The knot garden could be observed from the window of the small parlour where Elizabeth lay convalescing on the sofa, with Lady Carbery sitting beside her working at her embroidery.

  “I think you may have difficulty in the upbringing of that child, Eliza­beth,” said Lady Carbery gently, “I have seldom seen my husband so infatuated.”

  Elizabeth sighed. The miscarriage had been an unhappy experience and she was not just now taking a very favourable view of motherhood. She groped for comfort. “It struck me the other day,” she said, “that when she is grown Lucy may have beauty to commend her. I hope so, for our financial affairs are so disordered that we shall have very little to give her in the way of dowry, and I want her to marry well.”

  “Naturally,” said Lady Carbery. “We will put our heads together, my dear, when she is a little older.”

  “What do you think of my boys?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Nice boys,” said Lady Carbery. “Richard is especially attractive. He has beautiful manners and takes after your side of the family.”

  There was a little pleasant conversation about the excellence of Elizabeth’s family and then the Earl and Lucy entered with a request for the loan of Lady Carbery’s two silver ponies.

  4

  And so, as the quiet days of St. Luke’s summer slipped gently and peacefully away, the three children rode through the park and along the lanes of the beautiful countryside on two silver ponies and one white one, in the care of one of the grooms, and sometimes with Lord Carbery himself. The scarlet of rose hips in the hedges, and the glory of the golden bracken that clothed the high sheep walks, became for the children interwoven with the stories that he told them.

  On the last day of their rides together he took them to Ogor Dinas and told them his last story. In these hills, he said, in hidden caves, the heroes of old Wales lie sleeping by their arms, awaiting the time when the trumpet calls them to awake and crush the enemies of their country. Owen Lawgoch, Owen of the Red Hand, one of the greatest of Welshmen, was buried in one of the caves. He had fought for the independence of Wales against the English, and he had fought at Poitiers, but at the height of his power he had been murdered. Once upon a time, said the Earl, a young man called Dafydd Bettws had found his way down to the underworld of the caves. In one of them, illumined by mysterious light, he found a giant seated in a great chair, asleep with his head upon his hand. His right hand, that was the colour of blood, grasped a sword and at his feet lay a large dog. Armour and weapons were stacked round the walls of the cave and on a stone near the chair were gold coins. Dafydd was afraid to take more than one coin but next day, feeling brave, he thought he would go back for more. But he could not find the entrance to the cave, and since his day no one else had found it. And the trumpet had not yet sounded. The heroes of Wales slept on.

  They were sitting under the branches of a tawny oak tree on the hillside when the Earl told them this story, and he told it well, for he delighted in telling fairy tales to receptive children; and Lucy was the most instantly responsive child he had ever encountered. Their mounts were cropping the grass near them and the story finished he walked over to his horse to adjust a dragging rein. Lucy leapt to her feet, gave each brother a blow of her fist in the small of the back as a signal to stay where he was, and disappeared. The boys stayed where they were, Richard out of courtesy to his host and Justus because he was considerably winded. Lucy ran back along the bridle path they had been following, for she had seen the entrance to a cave up the hill under a rowan tree. She was inside it before Lord Carbery had finished with his horse.

  It might be the very one, she thought, for it narrowed to a passage that sloped into the earth like a rabbit’s burrow. Though the events of the past few weeks had brought her a considerable distance along the road to womanhood, the Earl’s story had flung her right back into childhood again, and her mind was alight with the thought of those sleeping heroes. The rock tunnel darkened as she crept along it but she was never afraid of the dark.

  And then the rock floor suddenly ended and she fell. It was a short fall, and then she landed on a flat rock, but one foot was twisted under her, and she was very bruised. She lay still for a few moments and then sat up. The pain in her leg made her gasp but she did not cry. She sat for some while too shocked and bewildered to think or remember, aware of nothing but the pain and a longing for Nan-Nan. It had been like this years ago when she had fallen out of bed, but then Nan-Nan had come at once. Now there was no Nan-Nan, though there was a gleam of a nightlight behind gold curtains. She looked at the glimmer, high up to her left, and slowly it became daylight shining through a curtain of golden bracken. Then she remembered where she was. This must be Dafydd’s cave. She looked round with a tremor of fear, half expecting to see the old hero asleep with his head on his hand. But there was nothing to be seen in the dimness except a small empty cave with ferns growing here and there. The entrance was where gold bracken shone but it would mean a climb up the rocks to get to the light and she could not move for the pain. The enchantment that had brought her tumbling in here so crazily had vanished and fear came, cold and clammy, and it was difficult to breathe and impossible to think. She was lost in the depths of the earth and no one would ever find her.

  Then suddenly courage and obstinacy revived and she knew she was not going to stay inside this horrible mountain with a long-dead hero, waiting for a trumpet that would never sound. She must get out. With her resolve the cave seemed not so terrible and reminded her of somewhere else, somewhere good. It was like the chapel in St. Davids Cathedral where she and Old Parson had knelt with Chancellor Pritchard, a stony place where the light shone through golden bracken just as it had glowed through the window in the chapel. She had prayed then that Old Parson might be happy and God had answered her prayer. God had been in his Cathedral but she could not in her pain and fright feel that he was here. Nothing seemed here except herself and her pain and fright. Chancellor Pritchard had told Old Parson that the mercy of God was in his heart. She put her hand over her heart and it was jumping about more like a frightened bird than God. Yet she could not think of anywhere else inside her where God could be; unless he was inside this agitation. She put both hands now over her bumping heart and shut her eyes, trying to see him there. She could not. She saw instead the damask rose at Golden Grove, and it glowed at its heart and was still. She was exceedingly surprised. “God?” she asked. Then she spoke again, but a little afraid to hear her own voice saying the tremendous word out loud in this stony place. “God.” After that she knew it was not true that she could not get to the light, and she began to drag herself over the stones.

  The pain was so horrible that the journey seemed to go on for a lifetime, so bad at times that she seemed to go blind and could no longer see the light behind the bracken. At these times, with nothing there to give her a sense of direction, she would have liked not to go on. But she was hounded on by the strength that was beating in her blood and pulsing in her heart, always a little stronger than the pou
nding pain. Then her hands were parting the bracken stems and sunlight was on her face.

  She could not remember afterwards how she got out of the hole. The next thing she remembered was lying in the bracken on the hillside. She heard the sheep crying up on the mountain and down below in the wood voices were calling her, Lord Carbery’s deep voice, and Richard’s treble and Justus’s shrill little pipe. “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” they called, and the sheep called back in answer, seeming to tell them where she was. And with the last of her strength she called too. “Richard! Justus!” And they came and found her.

  5

  She was a princess in good earnest after that, spending her luxurious days enthroned in Nan-Nan’s bed with the green curtains, holding her court, Nan-Nan in constant attendance. She had never been so admired, so petted. The blame of her escapade was placed entirely upon Lord Carbery. It would, his wife hoped in the privacy of their fourposter, be a lesson to him. There had been trouble before with the innocent young believing every word of the ridiculous tales he told them. And it was scarcely dignified for a man in his position to be running round the countryside with a pack of children as though he were their tutor. He took her criticism peacefully, having learned the technique of using the rhythmical rise and fall of wifely remonstrance as a soporific, and the adventure did not lessen his infatuation for Lucy. He murmured sleepily that she had been courageous under the hands of the surgeon when he attended to that fracture; mercifully a simple one, but nevertheless a painful business for a child. A gallant little maid. Not in the least like either of her parents.

  “I see a strong likeness to her father,” said Lady Carbery. “And do you realize that owing to this adventure we shall have the family with us for longer than we had feared?” She was a good woman, only very occasionally irritable, and then only to her husband, and it was actually the deep desire of her soul that Golden Grove should be a refuge for all lonely and homeless persons; but she was not strong and her fatigued mind and body were sometimes at outraged loggerheads with what her soul had done. But she loved children and was very tender to Lucy. She would come quietly into the room, her grey silk skirts rustling, and sit beside the child and read the bible to her. Lucy did not take much notice of the reading, for Lady Carbery did not read very well, but she liked to watch her gentle face and rest in her peacefulness, that was like that of the damask rose, and she would have grown to love her as much as she did the Earl if they had stayed longer at Golden Grove.