The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  She rose from her chair and moved with her slow, peaceful, ageing step across the garden, through the tulips to the gate. Outside in the lane was riotous confusion. Two wheels of a hired hackney coach were half-way up the low bank below the holly hedge and the rightful driver was trussed up in the boot, his place on the box usurped by Richard and Justus in a state of inextinguishable laughter. An extremely handsome boy, Richard’s friend Tom Howard, slid off one of the horses and bowed to Mrs. Gwinne. Within the coach Nan-Nan’s face was that of a woman who commends her soul to God, but Lucy’s glowed within her hood. Somewhere a lark was singing madly. Mrs. Gwinne saw it all in a brief kaleidoscope of colour, and felt the freshness of it on her skin, as though a rainbow had broken into fragments before her eyes and then fallen upon her in a spring shower. Then Lucy came tumbling from the rainbow and was in her arms, the hood fallen back from her face. So endearing was the whole affair that it took Mrs. Gwinne a few moments to realize that the behaviour of her grandchildren was increasingly outrageous. Their parents were now careless as to discipline, but the influence of Tom Howard was also to blame. A wild youth, she feared. Looking at him over Lucy’s head she received his bright glance and another exquisite bow.

  “Tom,” she commanded, “get that unfortunate man out of the boot. Who tied him up there? Richard, help Nan-Nan from the coach. Justus, put that horn down. There has been enough noise for one day.”

  She did not need to raise her voice for they obeyed her instantly. The coachman was liberated and despatched to the kitchen for ale and comfort, the little boy who was weeding the garden appearing to hold the horses, Nan-Nan and her bundles were taken upstairs by Phoebe the cook and the children followed Mrs. Gwinne into the parlour, where Tabitha, the second handmaiden, brought them watered wine in crystal glasses and thin slices of saffron cake. Tom Howard, who considered himself old enough to take his wine neat, made a slight grimace as he tasted it, a mere wrinkling of the nose that might have been an incipient sneeze. But Mrs. Gwinne noticed it. “You would prefer your water plain, Tom?” she asked sweetly.

  He smiled at her cheekily over the rim of his glass. He was dressed in jaffingale colours, green and scarlet, and his curly dark hair, disordered by the struggle with the coachman, lay long and tangled on his shoulders, proclaiming him a King’s man. All committed males tended nowadays to be extreme in dress, proud of their allegiance to one side or the other. Richard proclaimed no committal. He wore sober dark blue with smooth shining fair hair that barely touched his shoulders. He was in looks extremely like his mother, too mature for his age, his cool eyes watchful. He was courteous and much liked, but not truly loved by anyone except his mother.

  Justus had changed little during the last two years. His brown dormouse head reached a little higher up the door when his father measured him but otherwise he was the same, loyal and sweet-tempered as ever, a comforting and comfortable small boy. He was slowly developing a good steady brain and a strong sense of purpose. Richard, if he had any plans for his future, never divulged them, but Justus said he was going to be a barrister who would plead for poor men and stop their being hanged. This was the way that London had affected him. Too many poor men, he thought, and too many of them hanged.

  Lucy at ten years old was also too old for her age, but her maturity was different from Richard’s. The unhappiness of their home had closed his heart, that did not wish to feel, and turned his mind inward to his own affairs. But Lucy’s mind had been turned outward, probing too early the world’s tragedy and sin, that at times nearly broke her heart, and unable to be comfortable in her compassion as was Justus. Yet she was still a child in her vivid delight in the variety and beauty of the world, and in the vehemence of her loving, and the contrast of her childishness and maturity made up much of her fascination. Tom Howard’s eyes kindled on her sparkling face and he lifted his glass to her. “To my little wife,” he said.

  It meant nothing for in the parlance of the day wife was merely another word for sweetheart, but Mrs. Gwinne glanced gravely from one to the other. Suitable alliances between families were arranged very early and she had already given thought to Lucy’s future. Tom Howard, brother of the Duke of Suffolk, would be a fine match for her granddaughter. Yet she was not entirely sure that she liked him.

  “You are not at your studies today?” she asked.

  “It is a holiday, madam.”

  “A happy chance for all but the coachman, poor fellow.”

  “A pestilential Puritan, madam. He needed to be taught a lesson.”

  “He was insulting to you?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “No, Tom,” said Lucy, flying hotly to the man’s defence. “That is not true. He only called you a popinjay and said you needed a haircut. And you said he was a lousy rebel. How do you know he is a rebel? And you cannot know if he is lousy either, not without looking. You did not look. You jumped on him and tied him up. And I’m not your little wife. Call me that again and I will jump on you like you did on the coachman and pull your hair out.”

  A wave of despair passed over Mrs. Gwinne. For a year now she had been trying to turn Lucy into a lady, but the process had not been markedly successful. There were times when Lucy was the very pattern of a little princess, but at other times, no.

  “Lucy!” she said sternly. “Tom Howard is your guest.”

  “No, madam,” said Lucy. “We did not ask him to come with us. When we were setting off he was lounging about outside my Lord of Bedford’s house and joined us without invitation.”

  “Then he did you honour,” said Mrs. Gwinne. “And I beg that you will apologize to him for your rudeness.”

  “No, madam,” said Lucy. “That was not rudeness, that was telling Tom what he ought to know.”

  Tom had been twirling his wineglass, his eyes as full of sparkle as the wine, but whether amusement or anger predominated Mrs. Gwinne could not tell. He had a crooked smile that at all times appeared mocking, whether mockery was in his heart or no. What was not in doubt was his exasperated delight in Lucy, and his pleasure in teasing her.

  “You are my sweetheart whether you will or not,” he told her.

  Lucy became crimson to the roots of her hair. She would have flown at Tom but for her grandmother’s restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “It is a fair morning,” said Richard.

  “There were larks in Seven Dials meadow,” piped up Justus.

  Richard’s coolness rolled over the golden sparkles of Tom and Lucy and Mrs. Gwinne marvelled briefly at the strange power of a cold heart. It was as though sluice-gates had annihilated the buttercups in the meadow. But over the serene cold flood sang Justus’s larks, and they had the last word. Justus, so his grandmother believed, was pure goodness and he so often had the last word. He did now. The little party simmered down into a state of decorum and presently the coach drove away through Long Acre field towards London with the boys inside and the coachman on the box.

  Lucy and her grandmother, who had stood under the honeysuckle porch to see them go, turned back into the house hand in hand. “I have nearly finished my sampler, madam,” said Lucy quietly, “I have only one rosebud left.” The rest of the day passed peacefully, sitting under one of the apple trees in the garden, Lucy finishing her sampler while Mrs. Gwinne read aloud to her. Lucy loved her grandmother dearly and she was sorry that the necessity for plain speaking to Tom had grieved her. Lucy liked Tom and it was because she liked him that she kept having to face him with his lies. She could not explain this to her grandmother when Mrs. Gwinne gently scolded her for her rudeness, for she was like her father in that she was never able to explain herself.

  “Ladies must always be gentle and courteous to gentlemen,” said Mrs. Gwinne, closing her book and laying her clasped hands upon it. “And you must remember, Lucy, that a certain freedom of behaviour which is allowed to gentlemen is not permitted to ladies.”

  Now here was a th
ing which infuriated Lucy. Why one rule for gentlemen and another for ladies? But she swallowed the sudden spurt of anger and said gently, “Please, I have finished my sampler.”

  Mrs. Gwinne took it from her and admired the needlework. Lucy sewed much better now, could dance lightly and gracefully, play the spinet and sing like a robin, but though her mind was quick as her intuition she was still a poor scholar, able to read and write but not much more. Nor unfortunately was she much of a housewife. The house for her was still a place that she liked to run away from, and she still wished she was a boy.

  Her grandmother looked at her. Would she be beautiful? In the last two years she had grown fast and was tall for ten years old, but she was thin and at that date a rounded cushioned figure was the ideal of feminine beauty. Her brown face, wide across the cheekbones, tapered to an obstinate chin and her lips met firmly. Her eyes, framed in short thick dark lashes, were still the most remarkable thing about her, brilliantly blue and disconcertingly direct. Passionate and volatile as she was she could sometimes be completely still, held in a deep attention that to the beholder might have an apparent object or might not. Or, as now, she could be still for love’s sake, sitting under an apple tree beside an old lady. She was now beginning to enjoy peacocking in gay clothes but her enjoyment was that of a gipsy’s child; she liked the bright colours and the swish and rustle but seemed unaware of a torn petticoat or a skirt put on the wrong way round. She was fastidious but at the same time deplorably untidy.

  The shadows were lengthening in the garden and Mr. Gwinne’s bald head was thrust forth from the window of his library. Twice daily the rising tide of hunger washed him ashore from his books, and the hunger was so punctual that the maids could set the kitchen clock by it. The head was withdrawn and presently Mr. Gwinne came slowly across the lawn, his watch held open in the palm of his left hand. He was tall, with the stooped shoulders of a scholar and the uncertain walk of a man whose mind and body are seldom in the same century at the same time. His face was pale and leathery, his faded blue eyes remote. Brought up short by his wife’s spreading skirts he carefully closed his watch, raised his head, registered her whereabouts and bent to kiss her hand. Straightening again he became aware of Lucy’s curtsey.

  “Dear child!” he ejaculated, for he was very fond of her. “Why was I not told of your arrival?”

  “Lucy had her dinner with us,” his wife reminded him.

  “Did she?” he asked, and laid his hand on her hair. People liked to feel Lucy’s hair, springy as heather and warm and comforting as a dog’s fur. “Will she be here long?”

  “I had your thrice-given permission to invite her for several weeks,” said Mrs. Gwinne. She felt it necessary sometimes to insist on these things, lest her husband’s mind should lose touch altogether with its material surroundings. “Shall we go in to supper? We have a capon this evening.”

  His eyes brightened and he held out his hand to help her from her chair. She thanked heaven for his good digestion. While it lasted he was still hers.

  2

  “Madam my dearest,” said Nan-Nan to Mrs. Gwinne the next day, “she grows so fast and destroys her clothes so quickly that I cannot keep her respectable. See, madam my dearest.”

  Mrs. Gwinne had been a child in Nan-Nan’s first nursery and she was madam my dearest, while Elizabeth was merely madam my love. “Turn round, cariad,” said Nan-Nan and Lucy turned obediently, so that her grandmother might see how she had shot up out of her second best gown. Her best gown, which she had worn to church this morning, had met with an accident on the way home, for they had encountered a village dog fight, with a small mongrel dog getting the worst of it, and her best gown was now ruined.

  “Never mind, Nan-Nan,” consoled Mrs. Gwinne. “Dr. Cosin will not notice that the second best dress is a little short. There is plenty of fullness for her to make her curtsey and the colour suits her.”

  The dress had the hue of pale wood violets and invested Lucy with an unusual air of gentle goodness, and when she put it on she more often than not put on behaviour to match. Her histrionic sense, though unconscious, was strong.

  There was a sound of coach wheels in the lane. “I must go,” said Mrs. Gwinne. “Send her down, Nan-Nan, when she is ready.” Halfway to the door she came back again to kiss Nan-Nan, then left the room with her eyes full of sorrow.

  Lucy too knew that Nan-Nan was not happy in London. She had the air of a bird whose nest has been torn to shreds in a storm, and who sits among the ruins shrunken and bewildered. But not leaving them. Lucy knew she could be relied on not to leave them while any nestlings remained among the twigs. Nor was she leaving Nan-Nan. With sudden passion she seized the comb with which Nan-Nan was tidying her hair, as she had done on another Sunday at Roch, and flung it across the room.

  “I am not going down,” she stormed. “I am staying here with you!”

  “Pick up that comb, love,” said Nan-Nan sternly. “Go down to Dr. Cosin, you must, and behave prettily to match your dress. He is the one who will always help you, God willing.”

  Nan-Nan’s gentle voice had taken on the depth that it had when she was having one of her seeings, and she was forcing the comb through Lucy’s tangled hair with great determination. “How do you know?” Lucy demanded.

  “Who is to say how I know, cariad?” asked Nan-Nan. “I knew when I heard his step in the hall.” A silver bell sounded from below. “There child! Go now and mind your curtsey and your manners.”

  Nan-Nan’s extraordinary urgency communicated itself to Lucy and she ran down the stairs, opened the parlour door and came into the room as though a wind from the sea was behind her. Then she recollected herself and dropped the best curtsey of her life until now. Rising from it she lifted her chin and looked at Dr. Cosin in a way that might have seemed impudent but for its gravity.

  John Cosin was a tall erect man with a large black beard and eyes that could kindle very suddenly into anger or laughter. His nose jutted from his face with a fearless aggressiveness that made him look much older than his forty-five years. His big mouth was grim but amused. “I’ve not seen a great man before,” thought Lucy. “But he’s not as good as my grandmother. He could be very angry.” Then thoughts left her and she became only eyes, for this was one of her looking times.

  Mrs. Gwinne was alarmed by the apparent rudeness of what she was afterwards to call “Lucy’s dreadful blue stare,” and thanked heaven that Dr. Cosin had small daughters of his own; though she was quite sure they were none of them so unpredictable in behaviour as Lucy. Mrs. Cosin was a wonderful mother and the manners of her offspring were invariably excellent.

  But the great man was not offended. He laughed his great laugh and outlooked Lucy’s looking, his eyes kindling with sudden affection. “She is much the same age as my daughter Mary,” he said to Mrs. Gwinne. Then he abruptly turned from Lucy to his host, who for the last few minutes had been standing with an open book in his hand, discoursing on it with no idea at all that no one was listening to him.

  They went into the dining parlour, where Lucy sat opposite Dr. Cosin, but to Mrs. Gwinne’s relief her behaviour was now exemplary. When in the intervals of talk he smiled at her she returned the smile, and when his laugh rang out her face sparkled for a moment as though a small mirror had reflected a sunburst, but for the rest she spoke only if she was spoken to, and behaved in a manner entirely in keeping with the wood-violet dress. And she listened very intently to all that was said.

  Though Dr. Cosin was as ardent a bibliophile as Mr. Gwinne he had not the one-track mind of his host and had much to say upon other topics, chief among them the sorrows of the times.

  “These last few days have been critical,” he said, “and I have been glad to share them with the Archbishop. But apart from an abusive mob outside his palace in the evening, there has been no serious disturbance. Things are quiet now and I hope to return to Cambridge on Tuesday.”

  �
�They say the Queen’s mother has been most alarmed,” said Mrs. Gwinne.

  “Poor old lady, well she might be,” said Dr. Cosin. “The King received a letter threatening to chase the Pope and the devil from St. James’s ‘where is lodged the Queen, mother of the Queen!’ She refused to go to bed for fear of being murdered and the Prince of Wales, they say, wept for five days and was much troubled by bad dreams.”

  Lucy looked up and for the first time spoke without being spoken to. “Was he afraid?” she asked, her eyes intent and anxious.

  “Lucy!” chided Mrs. Gwinne, but Dr. Cosin answered the child with consideration for her obvious concern. “I do not think our Prince is ever afraid of physical danger, for he is an exceptionally courageous boy, but he appears to have a strong sense of personal property.” Dr. Cosin threw back his head and his laugh rang out again. “The Archbishop told me that when his father asked the cause of his grief the Prince replied, ‘My grandfather left you four kingdoms and I am afraid Your Majesty will leave me never one.’ ”

  Lucy considered this reply with gravity but not amusement. Though she had not yet seen the Prince she had an intensely personal feeling for him because he was just her age. That marvellous unknown planet that had swung into the daylight sky at his birth, bringing the astonished people out into the London streets to gaze at it, must have looked down on her cradle too. They were born under the same star. But there was no sentimentality in her feelings about him, though she saw him always in the guise of Prince Kilhwch of the Mabinogion, with his spears that could wound the wind, only a sense of unity and a desire that he should be in all things perfect. Was it right that he should be so concerned about his inheritance? She was not sure, and she felt uneasy. Her eyes dropped to her plate and the talk flowed to other matters; very quickly to that overwhelming matter of these days, the King’s belief in his right to govern without Parliament and to impose taxes as he wished without its consent.